Tue, 03 October, 2023
In January of 2023, the 9th meeting of the Ship Design & Construction (SDC) sub-committee agreed to a revised version of the Guidelines for the Reduction of Underwater Noise from Shipping. In this revised version, new guidance has been developed to assist ship designers, owners, and operators in considering the interrelationships between Energy Efficiency (EE), Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and Underwater Radiated Noise (URN) reduction while adhering to regulatory obligations and ensuring that the level of URN will be reduced. The revised Guidelines note that many of the energy efficiency improvement options identified to meet IMO regulations (EEDI, EEXI and CII) may result in an improvement in URN performance, although other options may require trade-offs between the two objectives.
To further explore and provide further guidance on the potential co-benefits and trade-offs that may exist between ships’ EE and the reduction of URN, the SDC Sub-Committee agreed to a work plan that includes organising an expert workshop to explore and provide further guidance on the potential co-benefits and trade-offs that may exist between ships’ energy efficiency and the reduction of URN.
Therefore, the SDC SC led by Canada Transport organised a workshop on 18-19 September 2023 at the IMO Head Quarter in London (https://www.imo.org/en/About/Events/Pages/URN-Workshop-2023.aspx). The workshop was to engage participants who work in the greenhouse gas (GHG) and underwater radiated noise (URN) technical, regulatory and policy spaces, to include broad participation from industry with practical experience implementing both GHG/emissions reductions programs as well as those who were interested in or involved in reducing URN.
The GATERS Project was invited to make a contribution to this two-day international workshop with other international experts working in the GHG and URN fields, reporting on the energy saving and URN results of the recently conducted sea trials of MV ERGE, as well as participating in a panel discussion on the same topic.
The project coordination team (Prof Mehmet Atlar, Drs Cagatay Koksal and Batuhan Aktas) attended the workshop from the University of Strathclyde and Dr Mario Felli from the CNR partner of GATERS. A review of GATERS and the energy saving and URN results of the MV ERGE trials were reported by Prof Atlar and Dr Koksal in a short presentation entitled “An Effective and Quieter Energy Saving for Ships - H2020 Project GATERS”, which can be accessed by the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/urcrbem5kmebvsz1rmbgu/GATERS_URN_IMO_Strathclyde-University_18Sept2023.pdf?rlkey=pf215peciqxt5pske5q5tddgh&dl=0