Take-up of innovative energy efficiency technologies in maritime transport

The maritime sector has seen a rapid growth in the number of innovative technologies that can help to improve the fuel efficiency and the emissions of the sector. These have ranged from design based technologies to alternative fuels and from hydrodynamic technologies to new maintenance regimes. Against a backdrop of highly volatile fuel prices, regulatory changes, such as the introduction of EEDI and ECA’s and unstable market conditions the proliferation of these technologies has increased yet their true uptake has been relatively less understood. Using a cross-sectional survey method, this paper attempts to bridge this knowledge gap by looking at the implementation of these innovative energy efficiency technologies in three key sectors, tanker, drybulk and containerships. The results show that there is significant heterogeneity in the market, with the drybulk sector having higher takeup of the technologies investigated in this paper.