What energy efficiency technologies are being retrofitted by which companies and how does this effect energy demand?
This crucial first database on existing fleet retrofit will identify best practice both of technologies and of incentivisation, to inform policy decisions on energy-efficiency retrofit; initially for shipping, and then extending to land and air transport.
Datasets characterising the global fleet (e.g. Clarksons WFR for ships) contain many useful technical details (installed engine, power, principle characteristics), but these are obtained when the vessel/vehicle enters the market (e.g. when it is purchased from the ship yard by the first owner). Retrofits of technologies (e.g. advanced paint systems, propeller designs, engine modifications) are common in the global fleet, but in many instances knowledge of these interventions is anecdotal and has not been catalogued. It is rarely aligned to the databases describing the vessel/vehicle when new. This shortcoming is important for two reasons:
1. There is no understanding of the scale of the impact of the existing levels of retrofit on the energy demands of the transport modes (particularly at disaggregate level e.g. which ships are investing in what type of retrofit technology)
2. The baseline fleet assumptions (used in emissions estimates and MACC analyses to assess emissions reduction potential) invariably assume the ship’s newbuild specification, so probably overestimate the emissions and overestimate the opportunity for their reduction through policy measures such as carbon price.
Principal Investigator Tristan Smith
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