The EU established a system for Monitor-ing Reporting and Verification (EU MRV) of carbon dioxide emissions of the maritime industry. All ships with more than 5,000 GT calling ports within the European Economic Area (EEA) have to monitor and to report their CO2 emissions. The Regulation ap-plies to all voyages to, from and between ports located in the EAA (Norway/Iceland) which also include the outermost regions of the EU (Azores, Canary Islands, Martinique, Mayotte, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, French Guyana, Madeira and Reunion).
Ballast voyages, from the last port of call where the ships have discharged cargo to the next port of call where cargo is load-ed, also serve the purpose of transport-ing cargo and are therefore subject to the regulation. Consequently, stops for the sole purposes of refueling, obtaining supplies, relieving the crew, going into dry-dock or making repairs to the ship and/or its equip-ment, stops in port because the ship is in need of assistance or in distress, ship-to-ship transfers carried out outside ports, and stops for the sole purpose of taking shelter from adverse weather or rendered necessary by search and rescue activities are excluded.
In the below mentioned example, the ves-sel loads cargo in Shanghai and Singapore bound for Le Havre and Gothenburg with a bunker call in-between.
- The first leg from Shanghai to Singapore is not MRV relevant because no EU port is involved.
- The bunker call in the Suez Canal is not a MRV relevant port of call, therefore the second leg from Singapore to Le Havre ex-cluding the time for refueling is the first EU MRV voyage which needs to be reported.
Please note that the charterer voyage defi-nition and the EU MRV voyage definition most of the times are different. EU MRV de-fines the voyage as a journey between two ports of call. • The last leg Le Havre to Gothenburg is for EU MRV already a second voyage.
The process of monitoring (per voyage by crew) and annual emission reporting (by head office) of accumulated data to the EU data base must be verified by a notified body – Briese nominated the Korean Register as verification body (third party managed vessels may nominate other verifica-tion bodies). The main purpose of EU MRV is to control CO2 emissions in the maritime industry.
For the voyage monitoring following parameters need to be reported by our good vessels:
Furthermore, we shall monitor information relating to the ship‘s ice class and to navigation through ice, where applicable.
The detailed procedures how to monitor the above men-tioned data are defined in a vessel specific Monitoring Plan (MP). In accordance with the EU MRV regulation, the MP must be verified by an independent and accredited verifier – Korean Register in our case.
To make life easier on board for you we will supply a software tool on board to collect the above mentioned parameters.
The vessels which serving BBC Chartering are already equipped with Veslink Voyage Reporting. With this tool, all MRV required data is easily captured within standard ves-sel forms as part of the normal workflow for arrival, depar-ture, and noon reporting. The collected data instantly feeds standardized reporting templates that could be submitted for MRV compliance.
For all other vessels an in-house software solution called BERT (Briese Emission Reporting Tool) has been developed.
In this regard we would like to the opportunity to thank the crews of M/V Petkum, M/V Emma Janneke and M/V BBC Adri-atic for all their inputs during the beta test phase. The BERT tool including an instruction how to use it will be sent to the vessels not using Veslink shortly. Unfortunately at the release of this article it is still under discussion if the Veslink tool fi-nally will be confirmed as MRV reporting tool for the BBC ves-sels. Please be assured that we will try to keep the additional workload to an absolute minimum.
Below the MRV Timeline published by the Korean Register; from 1st of January 2018 we have to monitor the informa-tion according to the Monitoring Plan and have to submit the verified emission reports to the European Commission by 30th of April 2019. This reporting period reoccurs annu-ally, from 1st January to 31st December each year.
