Facing the tough market conditions that persist in the OSV industry, we are all fighting to find ways to lower the cost of operations and avoiding many major investments. Despite this, at Maersk Supply Service we have prioritised investment in certain areas – one of them being energy efficiency.
When talking to our customers, a central topic in the conversation is always energy efficiency. Fuel consumption today makes up, on average, more than one third of a vessel’s operating cost. Therefore, it makes sense for our competitiveness, the environment, and our customers, to take material steps towards improving our energy efficiency. We are focused on onboard energy management, minimising fuel consumption, as well as lowering our environmental footprint.
To ensure that necessary attention is paid to this area, a dedicated team has been established with both onshore and offshore employees. The team is led by a former Maersk Line energy efficiency expert. With a background from Maersk Line, she has been part of driving the effort to increase energy efficiency in one of the world’s largest container companies. Initiatives include a Global Vessel Performance Center which works closely with crews to optimise their journey using real-time vessel-specific performance indicators, as well as technical retrofits to ensure maximum performance. New technology is expected to enable further savings, but people and collaboration remain the key to success.
Even though we cannot copy and paste initiatives from the container shipping industry, we can certainly learn from them. At Maersk Supply Service, we see two major elements to improving energy efficiency – fostering an awareness culture and ensuring vessels and their maintenance programmes are designed with this in focus.
The culture we foster
To change operational behaviours and establish a consistent energy efficiency culture across the Maersk Supply Service fleet are challenging goals, as our vessels vary in age, type and area of operation. Despite this, we see that creating awareness, supplying relevant people with the right performance monitoring tools, and close collaboration between our technical organisation and vessel crews has already resulted in several cases of significant improvement. For example, we were able to reduce fuel consumption by 11% in a Brazilian project where we implemented a cap on daily consumption. This is a great result for us, not only from a cost and emissions reduction perspective, but also because it demonstrates our commitment to improving efficiency to our customers.
We cannot do this alone, however. Making improvements during operations requires that we create an atmosphere, together with our customers, where we collaborate and openly discuss doing things differently.
An efficiency culture must also be supported by facts. For that reason, a key focus of our Energy Efficiency team has been on improving our fleet performance management. We have developed and implemented a new system for collecting high quality data on fuel consumption and energy production across our operations. With this data we are able to set tangible performance indicators and achievable, realistic goals for our vessels. In combination with establishing best operating guidelines, we aim to provide our crew with the necessary tools to maximise efficiency.
Efficiency in the design
Maersk Supply Service’s newbuild vessels are highly fuel efficient. They are designed to provide flexibility for diverse work scopes, reliability during operations, and the highest standards of onboard safety and comfort.
Our M-class AHTS vessels of the Starfish newbuilding series have been optimised for minimum propulsion power while allowing for maximum bollard pull. A fuel efficient and flexible hybrid propulsion system and fixed pitch on all side thrusters guarantees the highest fuel economy, low emissions and excellent station keeping capabilities. In addition, we have prepared our M-class vessels for installing battery packages that will improve energy efficiency further.
Maersk Supply Service’s effort to increase energy efficiency does not only take place on our newbuild vessels. There is a lot that can be done to optimise performance and increase energy efficiency of older vessels, such as technical retrofits and improved maintenance. We are currently investigating different technical upgrades that will increase fuel savings and consequently minimise our carbon footprint.
Creating value as an industry
Energy efficiency is moving up on the agenda in the OSV industry. We still have a lot to learn from other industries, but we have seen several steps in the right direction. With the new dedicated Energy Efficiency team at Maersk Supply Service, and with many ongoing initiatives across the organisation, we believe our goal of improving energy efficiency is achievable.
We are interested in engaging with our suppliers, customers and other stakeholders in collaborative innovation efforts to achieve this. This spans from the behavioural side to new technologies.
At Maersk Supply Service, we are currently evaluating several initiatives, but it is most important that we bring our capabilities together to create and deliver maximum value. As an industry, we need to continue to push each other to improve. Becoming more energy efficient is our responsibility – for the benefit of our oceans, the operations of our customers, and the strength of our industry.
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