Webinar Recap: Achieving Sustainability Goals within the Maritime Industry

An evolving conversation is happening in Corporate and Government forums across the globe as the industry prioritizes the management of carbon emissions. With the unanimous goal of achieving a set of aggressive sustainability targets, the maritime industry is beginning to help shape a more sustainable future through collaboration and innovation. 

In a recent webinar, ‘Achieving Sustainability Goals within the Maritime Industry,’ a group discussion was held to explore the importance of these two elements and provide a glimpse into areas where we at Veson have been collaborating and innovating, including the Veson IMOS Platform’s sustainability-focused innovation, Oceanbolt’s reporting capabilities for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and our Platform Partnerships with ZeroNorth and BunkerMetric. In this blog post, we recap some of the highlights from this conversation, including the three key pillars of making sustainable decisions throughout the voyage lifecycle that we have identified through extensive conversation with diverse clients and in-depth market understanding.

Three Pillars for Sustainable Decision Making

Based on the market demands, we have identified three core elements of focus when it comes to helping our clients achieve their sustainability goals: Data Collection, Analytics, Reporting and Sharing of the Data, and the Decision support tools.

We begin with data collection, which requires the gathering of timely insights directly from the vessel and the placement of this data into a standardized, usable format. Then comes the ability to analyze this data, report on it, and share it with internal and external stakeholders in both standard and bespoke reporting formats including complaince with the governing bodies. Finally, powered with the right data at the right time in the right format,  decisions can be made through a sustainability lens, whether the decisions are around chartering a vessel or executing a voyage. With this visibility, stakeholders can better understand their options and open doors to preferred financing terms and offer counterparties the option to make a more sustainable choice. 

Innovating For Sustainability with VIP

These pillars have been incorporated into our evolution at Veson Nautical since the industry first set out on this journey. To build on my last post on Sustainability Capabilities in the Veson IMOS Platform Today, let’s take a look at how our approach to sustainability at Veson has evolved to include digital tools along each step of the voyage lifecycle:

Some recent highlights from these sustainability-focused innovations include:

• The CO2 impact on the estimate and voyage levels to provide an overview of pre-fixture and post-fixture emissions results
• The API approach to estimation, operations, and vessel valuations tools to be able to streamline decision model creation
• The integration of Oceanbolt with voyage estimation and itinerary, opening a new opportunity to integrate evolving, real-time market data into your planning
• Sea Cargo Charter reporting for a simple and streamlined way to report for both the consortium and the counterparties.

Innovating For Sustainability with Oceanbolt

Since the acquisition of Oceanbolt, a data intelligence platform for maritime and commodity trade flow, sustainability innovation at Veson has extended to include exciting new functionality and easier access to valuable market data in VIP. Among this new functionality is the recent launch of Oceanbolt’s first ESG product, a Marine Protected Areas(MPA) algorithm that helps you understand the impact of shipping activities in MPAs and carry out environmental reporting for your Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). While this metric is costly and cumbersome to calculate manually, Oceanbolt’s geospatial processing algorithms can generate the required statistics in a matter of seconds.

Collaborating for a Sustainable Future

Beyond innovation within an organization, another key element we discussed in the webinar is the need for collaboration. By sharing data in a controlled and secure manner, we can position both our individual organizations and the broader industry in the best possible way to create a greener, more advanced, and prosperous future. For this reason, Veson has formed strategic integrations with Platform Partners like ZeroNorth and BunkerMetric to help you achieve your sustainability goals. ZeroNorth’s Optimise solution securely integrates with VIP to seamlessly transfer the voyage data in real time, informing client decisions around bunker management, CO2 emissions, and fleet-wide sustainability. The voyage optimization tool then runs the historic weather patterns with multiple variables such as the conditions, wave height, currents, and other to simulate multiple routes that the vessel can take. With the ability to get weather and routing data into the operators decision making toolbox, ZeroNorth has produced actionable insights that favor CO2 reduction and a positive impact on financial performance. This integration is enabled in an efficient cloud based solution and can be accomplished within an hour.

Through our partnership with BunkerMetric, the BunkerPlanner tool receives pertinent voyage information from VIP, including the vessel schedule, vessel technical information, bunker consumption, and ROBs. As a result, a complex algorithm intakes a number of variables and produces a suggestion on the most optimal routes that advise the routing in or around the ECA zones, scrubber usage, and the most financially reasonable bunkering ports. In addition, the Carbon Intensity Calculator (CII) calculates the top ten potential fueling ports and ranks them in the order of cost, CII, and other relevant KPIs, enabling the operator to make the most financially and environmentally sensible decision in real time voyage planning.

Innovation and collaboration are so important to us at Veson because they allow us to take real life challenges and imagine better tools to get us what we need and better ways to work together to achieve our goals at both an individual and collective level. As we continue to evolve alongside the maritime industry and the world, we are proud to support our community with the digital solutions that help you make an impact. To learn more, tune in to the ‘Achieving Sustainability Goals within the Maritime Industry’ Webinar on-demand by following the link below!