Try to imagine every ship in DFDS’ fleet having to produce a detailed report about the type and amount of oil used after every single voyage. This report also has to include the type and volume of cargo, the numbers of passengers transported, time spent at sea, distance sailed, and even the oil used during the ship’s time in port.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t just a mind game. According to a new EU regulation every ship calling at ports in the EU must report all this after each voyage, and then for the whole year. The company will have to do this for the entire fleet every year,” says Poul Woodall, Director of Environment and Sustainability.
Monitoring plan before 31 August
In 2018, all ships must comply with this Monitoring, Reporting and Verification regulation (MRV). “However, we must submit a so-called monitoring plan by 31 August this year. This plan must describe in detail how each vessel intends to collect, check, store and document all this information. The plan must describe each part of the process in detail, including a back-up procedure,” says Poul Woodall.
New software and an independent verifier
“With our huge number of voyages, this represents an avalanche of reporting and is a huge task. Therefore, we have purchased software to assist us with this. However, we still have some major hurdles ahead of us, such as splitting oil consumption between passengers and cargo on ro-pax vessels, and agreeing on converting fuel volumes to a mass figure. In addition to this, we need to agree on the appointment of independent, accredited verifiers to whom we can deliver our monitoring plan and in due course data for verification so that they can issue a compliance document. The verifier will probably be a company such as a class society, a quality assurance company or similar,” says Poul Woodall.
Any vessel larger than 5,000 GT entering an EU port after 30.06.2019 without this document of compliance will be subject to fines or may be refused entry.
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