The 2nd STG International Conference on Ship Efficiency, Hamburg, Germany, has questioned whether the current proposal to implement an Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) is an appropriate tool to cut ship emissions.
Professor Stefan Krueger, of the University of Hamburg Institute of Ship Design and Ship Safety, discussed the pros and cons of the EEDI currently debated within the IMO working groups before more than 200 conference participants.
Professor Krueger argued that the EEDI philosophy – part of IMO response to cutting CO2 emissions – had serious drawbacks and would undermine technical progress. Possibilities of optimizing the ship design would be extremely limited.
Professor Krueger made reference to the baseline definition, which depends solely on the deadweight of the ship and the ship type. This leads to ships being "efficient" when they are big and slow.
To make the Index work, Professor Krueger suggested to replace deadweight with payload and to improve the baseline concept by taking into account physical principles to encourage designers to develop more efficient designs resulting in significant reductions of fuel consumption.
He identified fuel consumption as the key to reduced emissions.
The next STG Conference on Ship Efficiency will take place in 2011.