Opinions seem to vary about the factors driving ship owners and operators decisions on how best to comply with the 0.1% sulphur limit in emissions control areas(ECA) which comes into force in January 2015, now less than three years away.
There are of course some complexities around the nature of the ship owning, chartering and operating business, which mean that questions do arise about whether the investor is the beneficiary, for instance in the case of a charterer benefitting from the cheaper fuel for a scrubbed vessel operating in an ECA, the scrubbers having been paid for by the owner. But these are far from insurmountable and market forces will doubtless play their part in resolving them. In this example for instance, the vessel might demand a hire rate premium thus sharing the benefit between owner and charterer.
Others have suggested that sea water scrubber retrofit is not viable for many vessels, either from a physical engineering stand point or from an investment payback perspective. This is also fairly difficult to justify given the universal agreement on the cost differential between compliant gasoil and the high sulphur residue which can be consumed if scrubbers are fitted. Even on fairly small vessels with modest fuel consumption, the differential will amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month and justify quite a lot of engineering effort and expense, even in older tonnage. At Oceanox we have yet to see payback of over 24 months (for vessels operating within the ECA) even based on conservative estimates of fuel costs differentials for the most complex installations.
We have also been told that some owners are concerned about the aesthetic impact of scrubbers, as readers of this blog will be aware, the Oceanox “Ecobox” is fitted external to the funnel. We have found that there are many ways in which the system can be blended in to reduce the aesthetic impact, but when all is said and done, to what extent is the revenue generating capacity of a ship constrained by looks? It is simply not credible to suggest that there is any impact on cargo vessels and even passenger ships can’t really claim a detrimental effect. As the picture on the left shows, funnels come in all shapes and sizes and from my own experience operating cruise ships, passengers tend to book on the basis of the itinerary, date availability, on-board facilities, tours and price rather than what the ship looks like.