Standard Touts Fuel Savings
A long-awaited International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard for ships and marine technology—expected to save the shipping industry billions in fuel costs—is nearing final publication.
ISO 19030, known as the Hull and Propeller Performance Standard, has been approved by the ISO’s Draft International Standard (DIS) ballot, with 93 percent of country representatives voting in its favor, Norwegian marine antifouling coatings manufacturer Jotun announced.
The standard, which prescribes practical methods for measuring changes in ship-specific hull and propeller performance, reportedly has the potential to deliver as much as $30 billion in annual fuel savings to the shipping industry, the company says.
The final standard—which has been in development for more than three years—is expected to available to the public in the third quarter of 2016.
Performance Measurement
Geir Axel Oftedahl, Jotun’s business development director for Hull Performance Solutions (HPS), managed the standard project on behalf of the ISO.
Since 2013, Oftedahl has overseen a team of 53 experts in an ISO working group convened by Svend Søyland of Nordic Energy Research. The group is made up of ship owners, ship builders, class societies, paint manufacturers, performance monitoring companies and research institutions.
Together, they sought to develop a standard that would be comprehensive, accurate and workable worldwide, Oftedahl said.
Poor hull and propeller performance accounts for an estimated 10 percent (or $30 billion) of the world fleet’s energy costs, Oftedahl said. And while “very effective solutions for improving performance” are currently available, he noted, until now the industry has lacked a globally recognized and standardized way to measure performance and provide a return on investment to ship owners.
“ISO 19030 satisfies that demand,” Oftedahl said, “prescribing measurement methodology and defining performance indicators for hull and propeller maintenance, repair and retrofit activities.
“We believe this will provide much needed transparency for both buyers and sellers of fuel saving technologies and solutions,” he added, “and, in doing so, enable the industry to operate with genuinely enhanced efficiency and environmental performance.”
Meeting Targets
Meanwhile, Jotun is taking steps to ensure that its own HPS guarantee remains compliant.
“Previously we used our own methodology as the basis for the guarantee, promising to refund customers the cost of the HPS upgrade if their vessel hulls failed to meet performance targets,” Oftedahl explained.
“However, now that a universal standard is so close to publication, we will use it as the foundation for the guarantee, effectively leading the industry with the first ISO/DIS 19030 compliant performance promise.”
The company’s HPS, launched to the market in 2011, combines one of its antifouling coatings with a full suite of sensors to measure hull performance and speed loss.
In March, the company released data for its first ever five-year dry-docking of a vessel—Gearbulk’s Penguin Arrow—that had been treated with the solution. According to Jotun, the ship demonstrated fuel saving of $1.5 million, cutting CO2 emissions by some 12,055 tons over the period.
