Emissions on the Far-East to US-east coast trades have fallen 23.3% since Q1 18, said Xeneta despite the onset of “over-tonnaging” and a major slippage in fill factor, reports maritime gateway.
Short-term comparisons, meanwhile, reveal more drastic changes since the onset of the unique market dynamics in 2022, which skewed results in 2021-22.
“Larger ships are more efficient in terms of CO2 emissions per teu,” noted Xeneta analyst Emily Stausbøll, adding that “while causing a capacity headache for carriers, new behemoth ships brought big emissions benefits on the major lanes during Q2″.
She added: “In a market already struggling with overcapacity, this was the last thing carriers needed, from a rate perspective, but the chain reaction has seen a positive impact on CEI scores.”
Increase in ship efficiency
However, increases in ship efficiency would produce more favourable results if they were not marred by decreased filling factor. In particular, Xeneta found the biggest drop in filling factor was on the North Europe-to-US east coast, which is down 20.3%.
Though Ms Stausbøll praised the introduction of larger and slower vessels to trades as an emissions reduction strategy, she said it could lead to adverse environmental effects if handled badly.
“It’s hard to be environmentally efficient when you are running ships half-empty,” she said. “The natural response from carriers to this conundrum is to remove capacity from some of the major tradelanes in order to protect freight rates – and so begins the chain reaction throughout the world’s shipping network.”
IMOs model
However, a shortcoming of CEI, shared with the IMO’s model, CII, is that it measures emissions on a per-ship basis, rather than quantifying emissions from the sector as a whole.
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Source : Maritime gateway
