Just In Time (JIT) arrivals could cut container shipping emissions per voyage by 14 per cent, a new report has found.
The study, commissioned by the IMO-Norway GreenVoyage2050’s Global Industry Alliance to Support Low Carbon Shipping (Low Carbon GIA), is centred on JIT arrivals – which allows ships to optimise speed during their voyage to arrive in port when berth, fairway and nautical services are available.
Undertaken by MarineTraffic and Energy and Environmental Research Associates (EERA), the deep-dive explores the global implementation of JIT in the container sector.
Using AIS data from the calendar year 2019, the impact of JIT on fuel consumption and emissions was assessed by optimising all voyages in three scenarios:
- Over the entire voyage
- Over the last 24 hours
- Over the last 12 hours
The results show that while optimising speed over the entire duration of a voyage offers the greatest saving opportunity (displaying a mean fuel saving per voyage of 14.16 per cent), there were benefits in all scenarios with savings of 5.90 per cent (24 hours scenario) and 4.23 per cent (12 hours scenario), respectively.
This indicates that implementing JIT over the last 12 hours of a voyage can already greatly contribute to fuels and emissions savings, the report authors wrote.
On digital operations, last year the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) released an interface standards and messaging API as part of its efforts to improve Just-in-Time (JIT) shipping.
The DCSA said the new interface standards will enable automated data exchange between carriers, ports and terminals for the main five phases involved in any port call.
In 2020 the Port of Rotterdam ran a trial with 26 vessels utilising JIT arrival outside of one of the port’s terminals. On average the 26 ships consumed 9 per cent less fuel in the JIT scenarios where speed was optimised in the final 12 hours.
Capt. Andreas M. van der Wurff, Port Optimisation Manager at A.P. Moller-Maersk and Chair of the Low Carbon GIA Ship-Port Interface workstream, said: “In fighting climate change, global shipping has a steep mountain to climb, and we need to pull all levers to deliver in line with the Paris Agreement.
“The study underlines that while we work to accelerate and scale the availability of the future green fuels, in the short-term significant emissions reductions can be achieved by bringing vessels, terminals and ports together to exchange standardised data and facilitate Just In Time arrivals.”
“We’re excited to deliver this study to the IMO! Just In Time sailing can contribute significantly towards emissions reduction. We have demonstrated that half of the benefits can be achieved by optimising less than 10 per cent of voyages,” added Argyris Stasinakis, Executive Partner at MarineTraffic.
“These are low hanging fruits for our industry. I am proud by the analysis conducted by the MarineTraffic data team in collaboration with EERA.”
