fuel efficiency | Supply Chain and Logistics

Slow steaming is a good way to save on fuel costs and meet the new IMO requirements. So ships have slowed down. But I was amazed at the graph below, showing a trend for quite a while.

Slowing down is an important way of cutting CO2 emissions from fuel oil. It also implies that more ships are needed to meet planned sailings on a scheduled route. It’s a deliberate reduction of individual ship ‘productivity’, since fewer paid cargo-carrying trips can be made in a year. But it may be a better fit with the demand for shipments right now, and it might result in fuller vessels.

We should remember that slow steaming will not eliminate CO2 emissions problems; it’s a stopgap at best. New types of power with very low or zero emissions through their life cycle well-to-wake must be developed. The investments have to be made.

Sam Chambers October 2, 2023

Bulk carriers and containerships moving at slowest speeds on record this year

Studies by Simpson, Spence and Young, a leading global shipbroking firm, seem to indicate that emission benefits of slow-steaming have been exaggerated.

One reason offered is that the ‘cubic law’, which says that fuel consumption rises as the cube of ship speed, is erroneous for many vessels, and is only approximately true at the designed speed of the ship.

Another problem is that slow-steaming effectively reduces capacity, requiring more ships to cover a route with a regular schedule, for instance. Those extra ships produce more emissions even though the per-ship emissions might be smaller.

Capacity is not a problem at present. There’s not enough cargo. But scheduled service may suffer.

There are a lot of moving parts in considering emissions release.

The best way to attack the problem may be to get to zero or low-emission ships as quickly as possible. But in the short run, these considerations in he study are worth thinking about.

By Charlie Bartlett, technology editor 15/05/2023
Benefits of slow-steaming on emissions exaggerated, studies find – The Loadstar

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Bulk carriers and containerships moving at slowest speeds

Benefits of slow steaming exaggerated?

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