The Issue
Did you know that 95% of our visible trade in the UK comes to us by sea? The emissions from shipping are significant. If we put shipping emissions on the list of the world's biggest polluters by country, shipping would be the seventh largest country.
75 countries signed the MARPOL Agreement requiring shipowners to reduce their emissions of SOx and NOx from January 2015. Green Sea Guard has developed a system to help coastguards monitor emissions and make their job easier; the system also helps shipowners to monitor their CO2 emissions and subsequently report these data to their customers.
Coastguards currently enforce UN regulations by manual inspection of fuel tanks and by inspecting paper fuel receipts. At best these methods are time-consuming, which impacts profitability of ships: Green Sea Guard units are priced at the cost of operating a large vessel for three or so hours, while manual coastguard tank inspections can take four days to complete, during which time the ship will be incurring additional operating cost and delay to schedules. At worst, fuel receipts are often inaccurate and can be forged relatively easily; a known problem to regulators. Fitting the system allows shipowners to avoid fuel and receipt inspections completely, while coastguards and port authorities can benefit from automation of a manual process. EU guidelines require coastguards to inspect one ship in ten, but the most conscientious coastguards currently inspect less than one in seven hundred.
Green Sea Guard provides a system to track ship exhaust emissions, transmitting data collected from the ship’s exhaust, and sending it to a secure server. Coastguards and other regulators, as well as shipowners, and operators can log in and review the emissions profile of interest. Each device includes a range of security and anti-tamper measures.
Are you a shipowner, ship operator, regulator, coastguard or port authority?