Empowering EU shipyards/ship owners with tools for assessing ships' environmental impact and shipyard processes
Project EcoShipYard focuses on creating solutions that will help minimise the environmental impact of shipyards, enhance energy efficiency, streamline operations, and measure and reduce non-operational impacts. Therefore, the project aims to discover innovative methods to oversee the circularity of materials by creating and implementing an EU-material passport specifically for ships.
The European shipbuilding industry is striving to respond to challenges related to competitiveness, innovation and sustainability whilst considering greenhouse gas emissions arising from non-operational floor processes, such as ship building, maintenance, repairs and re-fit. These occur during the ship’s lifecycle, generating pollution and waste, and resulting in high energy consumption and related costs. In addition, dismantling practices at ships’ end-of-life produce waste and scrap, with scrap volume having been estimated at 1.3-2.1 million LDT/year EU-wide.
The EU-material passport for ships, a key component of the EcoShipYard project, aims to monitor the source and utilisation of materials in the construction, upkeep, repair and dismantling of ships. This will provide crucial details for the circular handling of materials by tracking their origin and use, thus making a significant step towards promoting the use of sustainable materials in the shipbuilding industry. Methods and systems to minimise the ecological footprint in shipbuilding and enhance energy efficiency, such as deployment of sustainable energy sources, electrification of ports, and streamlining logistics and operations, will also be explored. TWI Hellas is responsible for the EcoShipyard platform’s operational testing, system integration, and data and IPR management.
Partners: National Technical University of Athens, American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), Atlantec Enterprise Solutions, Astilleros de Santander (Astander), Azimut-Benetti Group Shipyard, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Danaos Shipping Company, Epsilon Malta Ltd, Floorganise B.V Shipyard Engineering, Grieg Green, Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade Technological Interface Center (ISQ), LTH Baas Integrated Maritime Services, ShipReality Research Ltd, University of Strathclyde Naval Architecture & Engineering, Foundation WEGEMT European Universities Association and TWI Hellas
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.