De Beukelaer discusses COVID-19 border closures cause humanitarian crew change crisis at Sea.

Given the initially indiscriminate travel restrictions adopted in March 2020, many seafarers have been stranded on their ships, well beyond their initial labour contracts. Notwithstanding repeated calls by the United Nations, the shipping industry, and maritime unions to designate seafarers as “key workers” in all jurisdictions, many countries still do not allow crew change. While crew change is however generally possible in many ports, the number of people stranded at sea remains unacceptably high...

"The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually everyone on the planet. But the impacts have been diverse and uneven. In this article, I reflect on the plight of seafarers during the pandemic. I suggest that being ‘locked in’ is intrinsic to life at sea, as one can’t simply leave a ship. What makes the experience of the pandemic so challenging at sea is being ‘locked out’ of land. With border closures prohibiting ‘crew change’, many seafarers have been forced to extend their contracts, stay aboard, and postpone going home for long and often undefined periods of time. My article combines a reflexive personal narrative of being confined to a ship at sea for five months, while being excluded from land, with the question of how spending the pandemic at sea could be understood in relation to maritime labour," says De Beukelaer

Ahoka's thesis is a case study that aims to assess the potential of improvement in the fleet energy efficiency of 49 Medium Range Tankers and how the implementation of the voyage optimisation process would affect the overall economics of the shipowner.  The results of the case study show that the potential in fuel saving and emission reduction can be 11.5 to 28% depending on the optimisation strategy. A reduction in fuel costs can increase the average daily revenue performance of the fleet of up to 7.2% to 17.8%

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Workshop on Greenhouse Gas Emission and Shipping held in Singapore on the 13 Nov 2018.  This study aims to investigate: which MBM is suitable to mitigate CO2 emissions for international shipping?  Findings demonstrate that find that fuel levy is more suitable due to higher effectiveness in generating funds, encouraging R&D and technology adoption. ETS is harder to implement as it requires more man-hours to set-up, operate and review. ETS with full auctioning of credits becomes marginally comparable to fuel levy.

Abstract: While operating measures and fuel alternatives are suitable in the short-term to meet these novel regulatory constraints, as the use of fossil fuels tapers off, the long-terms solution appears to reside in wind-assisted ships. Consequently, this study aims to identify viable solutions that could reduce emissions, focusing on three prominent technologies, namely sails, rotors and kites. Furthermore, this review provides guidance on the benefits and risks associated with each technology and recommends guidelines for performance prediction and associated constraints. Ultimately, future stakes in wind-assisted propulsion are highlighted, including the need for full-scale validation, the challenge in assessing environmental and economic impact, and the structural issues associated with wind-assisted propulsion systems

little analysis exists to illuminate the effects of sail freight vessels engaged in shipping along rivers. Even less of the literature provides meaningful, in-depth insight into the operations of such vessels. The 64-ft (19.5 m) schooner Apollonia, a small general cargo vessel and the only active, operational sail freighter in the United States, operates on the Hudson River and in New York Harbor. The ship’s logs and other data from 2021, the Apollonia’s first sail freight season, are examined here to gauge the performance of small sail freighters on river trade routes. The available data shows sail freight has a strong advantage over comparable trucking in fuel use per Ton-Mile

The Initial IMO GHG Strategy aims to reduce annual GHG emissions from international shipping by at least 50 per cent by 2050 compared to 2008 while pursuing efforts to peak GHG emissions from the international shipping sector as soon as possible and set international shipping on a pathway consistent with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Analysts agree that the current regulatory framework will need to be supplemented with stringent additional measures to achieve these aims.  Recent studies and projections indicate that revenues that could be raised from pricing carbon in shipping between $1.3 trillion to $2.6 trillion in total; in a full decarbonization scenario by 2050, revenues could be between $1 trillion to $2 trillion (Baresic et al. 2022).4 According to another study, a flat carbon levy of $250/ton of GHG would raise $3.7 trillion by 2050 (Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, 2021). Based on a recent submission to the IMO, we estimate that annual carbon revenues could amount to over $60 billion per year.