The IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) will uphold previously agreed sector-specific Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) targets for Ro-Pax and Ro-Ro vessels.
The committee's latest session, MEPC 73, tightened EEDI requirements for certain ship types, but confirmed that ferries would be among the categories where it is appropriate to retain the original timeline and reduction rates. These had been set in three phases, requiring improvements of 10 per cent by 2015, 20 per cent by 2020 and 30 per cent by 2025.
After MEPC 71 in July 2017, a correspondence group was set up to review the feasibility of the targets. Recommendations were submitted to MEPC 73 following seven rounds of communications.
"Some findings in the correspondence group were not adopted by the MEPC, which I regret to say will undoubtedly create major challenges for certain sizes of container, tanker and bulk vessels," commented ferry industry group Interferry's Regulatory Affairs Director Johan Roos. "As such, we are pleased to note the IMO's continued recognition of our particular case, where one size definitely does not fit all – ferries have very specific operational requirements which affect their design criteria."
The decision follows another in April this year, when MEPC 72 confirmed the immediate application of a 20 per cent correction in its EEDI calculation formula for Ro-Pax and Ro-Ro vessels. Interventions by Interferry and various flag states had argued that the universally-applicable targets were problematical even for highly efficient Ro-Ro newbuild designs due to the diversity of such vessels.
