Fuel EU Emission reporting – why spread sheets are no longer a good idea

The phone call was really nice and pleasant. The guy sounded quite experienced and knew the subject. But when I asked him about the topic of reporting software for emissions, he said laconically: “You know, we do it with Excel. We can handle that. We don’t need any extra software for this.”

Since 2018, seagoing ships have had to report their CO2 emissions as soon as they call at European ports. Since the beginning of this year, shipping has had to purchase pollution rights (so-called EUAs) for the emissions of their ships. So, CO2 costs money.

Now, Fuel EU Maritime will come into force from January 1, 2025.
The new EU regulation is putting pressure on shipping to gradually make their ships greener. In other words: the amounts of CO2 emitted per year must be systematically reduced. The solution for many shipping companies to keep within the allowed emission limits is the usage of bio fuels.

However, Fuel EU comes with some tricky requirements:

First: From January onwards, every ship larger than 5000 GT no longer has to report the consumption per fuel type as a total, but rather divide it up by consumer. So instead of simply adding together the consumption for main engine and auxiliary, all consumers like main engines, aux. engines, boilers… will have to be recorded and reported separately.

And second: As soon as you are using bio fuel, it can be bunkered in mixing ratio. Each mixture has its own specific emission factors for CO2, NOx and SOx.

This means: In the future you will not be able to simply bunker and consume MDO or HFO, but rather the consumption from each fuel bunker will have to be considered separately for each aggregate. By the way, this also applies to all ships less 5000 GT as soon as they use bio fuels.
This reporting task will create a lot of additional work for the crew on board. Sure, you can do all that with Excel. But are you really sure that you want to do this sending spread sheets back and forth?

If you want to get rid of Excel sheets drop us a line. Or book you video meeting here: https://calendly.com/herberg-systems/fleettracker-online-presentation

By the way, the guy on the phone wanted to think about it again. There would still be a bit of time…

Photo from Pixabay