Under the auspices of the IMarEST UAE branch, Verifavia Shipping from France sponsored a technical meeting on the EU MRV regulation. The event was attended by 80 delegates from the Middle East & Indian subcontinent maritime fraternity.
At the onset, Nikeel Idnani, Honorary Secretary of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) UAE branch highlighted the important objective of the IMO & European Commission which is to reduce GHG emissions and improve energy efficiency in shipping, even in today’s fractious times. Towards this end, there are regulations which require ship operators to annually monitor, report & verify CO2 emissions from ships above 5000gt. Commencing 1 Jan 2018, CO2 emissions & relevant data will need to be reported and will be verified by independent verifiers before being sent to a central database. Nikeel then introduced the speakers – Mr. Yuvraj Thakur (EU MRV Auditor/Commercial Head APAC Verifavia Shipping), Mr. Ganesh Lingaratnam (Sales Manager Shipping, StormGeo – AWT) & Aaron Holton (Founder & CEO of Tres Technology Solutions).
Mr. Yuvraj Thakur in the keynote presentation announced that Verifavia Shipping had received their second accreditation (after the United Kingdom Accreditation Service) by France’ s national accreditation body Cofrac as a global EU monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) Verifier. This makes Verifavia the first globally accredited verifier to receive dual accreditation under ISO 14065 standard & regulation 757/2015 enabling the company to verify any ship anywhere in the world, regardless of country of ownership, flag state or class. To comply with the EU MRV Regulation, ship owners and operators of vessels exceeding 5000 gt and operating in the EU (approx. 14000) must prepare and submit their ship specific Monitoring Plans (MP) commensurate with the Verification guidelines, detailing the procedures, systems and responsibilities in place to monitor Fuel consumption, carbon emissions and associated transport work. With the first regulatory deadline on 31 August 2017, ship owners and operators must act urgently to ensure timely compliance with the regulation. To coincide with its most recent accreditation, Verifavia Shipping has launched its free-to-access EU MRV Extranet. The extranet seeks to optimise and streamline the EU MRV compliance process by providing Verifavia’s customers with a leading-edge platform for the secure, efficient and real-time online assessment of EU MRV MPs.
Mr. Aaron Holton, visiting from Tres Solutions’ headquarters in Houston, reflected on the relatively simplistic methods of reporting e.g. email and spreadsheets, that owners and technical managers have historically employed. He remarked that upcoming regulations and evolution of the industry will increase the uptake of web-based tools and automated data logging, which should simplify compliance efforts. However, data validation by these platforms is critical to comply. In addition, validated data can be leveraged in performance optimization efforts for owners and ship managers, as better data will ultimately yield better insights. Tres’ TVA performance optimization software is currently undergoing MRV certification by Verifavia.
Mr. Ganesh Lingaratnam enlightened the audience that StormGeo has been collecting, monitoring and reporting data on fuel consumption and emissions on 8,300 ships. To ensure ship managers can trust that the reporting will be handled properly, StormGeo has embarked on becoming accredited as an MRV compliant service provider and is partnering with Verifavia so that MRV needs can be completely handled from assistance with the monitoring plan to submission of data to the verification entity.
Ship owners/managers from Auburn Shipmanagement, UASC, Simatech, NITC, ESHIPS, MSH Shipmanagement, Central Ship Management, Admiral Shipping, Topaz, Synergy, PB Towage, VM Marine, Akron, Alphard Group, Givenergy, Noah & Mideast Ship Management, top management of McDermott Middle East, suppliers/service providers from Smartech Automation Solutions, Endress+Hauser, Seatrade UBM, Al Fattan Shipbuilding, Danem Energy Oil & Gas, Intershipping Services, Radio Holland, Greenwich Marine, Abu Dhabi Marine Services, Ulmatec, Sharaf Shipping, Abu Dhabi Ports, Britannia Maritime Security, Actium Offshore, Gulf Petrochem, classification societies executives from ABS, BV, DNV GL, ClassNK, RINA & LR and independent surveyors from Noble Denton & Viking Marine Services were also present amongst the esteemed attendees.
An engaging Q&A session concluded with an Iftar, the traditional meal when Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset.
Did you subscribe for our daily newsletter?
It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe!
Source: Verifavia Shipping
