Projects

How do the EU MRV and IMO DCS affect the environmental management and performance of ships and the maritime supply chain?

This project will complete a study of the EU’s new Monitoring Reporting and Verification system (MRV) and the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Data Collection System (DCS) with a view to understanding how energy efficiency information can contribute to increasing the sustainability of the maritime supply chain. The effects of the MRV and DCS systems on the environmental management and performance of ships and the maritime supply chain will be studies, with a particular focus on the study the following research questions: To what extent do the MRV and DCS systems contribute to environmental upgrading in the maritime supply chain? Do these schemes provide greater transparency regarding ship’s environmental performance and fuel consumption to ship-owners, charterers, cargo-owners and other stakeholders? How do ship-owners, charterers and other stakeholders respond to new data sets, which are becoming available with the MRV and DCS systems? How do the MRV and DCS systems align with private eco-rating schemes in shipping? How can further alignment between public and private initiatives contribute to environmental upgrading in shipping? Several authors have argued that a lack of transparency regarding ships’ fuel consumption and environmental footprint hampers environmental upgrading efforts in shipping. This research will seek to address this concern by focussing on the effects of the MRV and DCS systems and their interactions with private eco-rating schemes to advance the above discussions, and make a contribution to several streams of literature, including global value chains, energy efficiency, public and private environmental governance etc.