Eco-Shipping Project With A Speed Planning System For Japanese Coastal Vessels

The Eco-Shipping Project has conducted demonstrative experiments since the beginning of this year using about 40 vessels including coastal cement carriers, oil tankers, and ro-ro ships supported by the Ministry of the Environment. The goal of this project is to reduce fuel and CO2 emission by 15%. The authors developed a voyage speed planning system which calculates a vessel optimum speed plan that takes into account weather forecast information and generates minimized fuel consumption for an operation. This paper describes an approach to optimize speed profiles on ship just-in-time voyages to save fuel and reduce CO2 emissions, and introduces some cases of experimental results.