Sustainability in Maritime Transport: Advances, Solutions and Pending Tasks

In accordance with the European Commission indications, based on the third IMO Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Study 2015, maritime transport is responsible for about 13% of global GHG emissions, with a clear increasing trend if no control actions are implemented. Furthermore, the IMO GHG study showed that shipping emissions could increase between 50% and 250% by 2050, in clear disagreement with the Paris Agreement.

At the same time, there is a certain delay in the response from the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which can be considered the appropriate organization to fight against this threat, and the European Commission has had to take action on the matter. To organize the necessary research activities, the European Commission has defined 3 steps toward reducing GHG emissions from the shipping industry:

• Monitoring, reporting, and verification of CO₂ emissions from large ships that use EU ports
• Greenhouse gas reduction targets 
• Further measures

After an initial sampling step, an initial goal was defined in accordance with the Paris Agreement to reduce GHG emissions from shipping by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels. While this is a promising step, it is just a proposal, and the related research activities remain to be developed. To materialize solutions for this problematic situation, some amendments from the European Union are centered into supporting IMO energy efficiency projects and the implementation of standards such as Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) and Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan (SEEMP).

Nowadays, the tendency in research activities is to fall short of complete development due to the lack of original ideas—these must be proposed and demonstrated by the scientific community as the first step towards an international solution. This is the aim of this Special Issue: to demonstrate new technical solutions to this global problem as a useful tool for international organizations in the near future, toward developing support processes and establishing standardization.

Finally, like in previous issues, the collaboration between companies and research centers may be the optimal tool to help this kind of organization with technical solutions derived from their related knowledge areas, which can be among the topics to be explored this issue:

• Slow steaming (Marine Engineering),
• Weather routing (Navigation Science),
• Ship designs (Naval Architecture)
• Ports design (Civil Engineering)

Dr. José A. Orosa
Guest Editor

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