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At an event held under the auspices of the IMarEST UAE branch, Verifavia Shipping from France was able to assist 80 delegates from the Middle East and Indian subcontinent gain a clearer understanding of the new EU MRV regulations. Opening the forum, Nikeel Idnani, Honorary Secretary of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) UAE branch, highlighted the important objective of both IMO and the European Commission, which is to reduce harmful emissions and improve energy efficiency in shipping. Working towards this end, the new regulations require ship operators to annually monitor, report and verify CO2 emissions from ships above 5000gt. Commencing January 2018, CO2 emissions and other relevant data will need to be reported and verified by independent companies, before being sent to a central database.
Nikeel then introduced the three speakers: Yuvraj Thakur from Verifavia Shipping; Ganesh Lingaratnam of StormGeo – AWT; and Aaron Holton of Tres Technology Solutions.
In his keynote speech, Yuvraj Thakur announced that Verifavia Shipping had recently received its second accreditation – after a first from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service – by France’ s national accreditation body, as a global EU monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) verifier. This makes Verifavia the first globally accredited verifier to receive dual accreditation under the ISO 14065 standard and EU regulation 757/2015, enabling the company to verify any ship anywhere in the world, regardless of country of ownership, flag state or class. To coincide with its most recent accreditation, Verifavia Shipping has launched a free-to-access EU MRV Extranet, which seeks to optimise and streamline the EU MRV compliance process.
Aaron Holton, visiting from Tres Solutions’ headquarters in Houston, reflected on the relatively simplistic methods of reporting that owners and technical managers have historically employed. The upcoming regulations will increase the uptake of web-based tools and automated data logging, which should simplify compliance efforts. However, data validation by these platforms is critical and, in addition, validated data can be leveraged as part of performance optimisation efforts by owners and ship managers, as better data will ultimately yield better insights into how efficiency can be improved. Tres Solutions’ TVA performance optimisation software is currently undergoing MRV certification by Verifavia, it was revealed.
Ganesh Lingaratnam informed the audience that StormGeo has been collecting, monitoring and reporting data on fuel consumption and emissions on 8,300 ships. To ensure ship managers can trust that the reporting will be handled properly, StormGeo has embarked on the process of becoming accredited as an MRV compliant service provider. The company has now entered into partnership with Verifavia so that MRV needs can be completely handled from assistance with the monitoring plan to submission of data to the verification entity.
