Weather service provider Weathernews is to offer a new feature which it hopes will improve emissions reporting and compliance for shipping.
“Our vision is to help create a sustainable future for shipping founded on safety and environmental consciousness. Our new Carbon Intensity Monitoring (CIM) service is an integral part of that journey and promises to make a huge difference in reliable CO2 reporting and regulatory compliance,” explained Weathernews Americas CEO Antonio Brizzo.
The company notes that climate regulation compliance and the ability to precisely monitor individual vessel and fleet emissions is a big challenge for shipping companies. “Aligning shipping and chartering activities to be environmentally responsible is the ultimate goal of CIM, through measuring and reporting CO2 emissions from berth to berth, including the voyage legs under spot chartering,” said Brizzo.
CIM collects all required data via interactive reporting tools and provides multi-layered data verification for accurate calculation of a vessel’s Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator (EEOI) and CO2 . CIM also integrates with Weathernews’s proprietary Optimum Ship Routing (OSR) service to optimize voyage fuel consumption – while also improving EEOI if the charter market is low.
The company claims that CIM stores factual emissions data in a secure and trusted environment. Using a proprietary distributed ledger database, it says the back end will be based on blockchain to ensure traceability and transparency. This will allow the market to freely trace the exact amount and location of emissions from a single ship, a particular trade route, or the carbon intensity efficiency of a particular ship by means of its EEOI.
This, Weathernews suggests, not only enhances supply chain visibility but also enables stakeholders to satisfy increasingly stringent requirements for environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. “We aim to become the official scorekeeper of choice, and a recognized third-party entity to guarantee transparency and unbiased reporting,” added Brizzo.
Weathernews states its long-term goal is to launch a cap-and-trade digital marketplace for carbon credit offsetting. “Charterers and owners want to achieve environmental targets but also ensure the investments they make will generate a financial return,” says Brizzo. This proprietary trading system, called Marine Carbon Blocking (MCB), also leverages blockchain and will allow users to convert CO2 reduction efforts in environmental assets for exchange.
“We are working with our partners to go live with this exciting initiative during 2021. Companies globally are increasingly choosing to work with purpose-led partners that share their values, and we invite others to reach out to us if they would like to get involved,” concluded Brizzo.