Introduction
Every owner wants a more efficient ship.
Yet many of the ships that could deliver the greatest lifetime fuel savings never make it past the initial selection process.
The maritime industry has spent decades optimizing standard ship designs. Every new generation of MR tankers, for example, is expected to be slightly more efficient than the previous one. Hull lines are refined, propulsion systems are improved, and designers continue to search for the next percentage point of reduced fuel consumption.
However, there is a fundamental challenge: the selection criteria used by ship owners, charterers, and cargo owners often prevent many of the most promising efficiency improvements from being recognized.
The industry has created a system where ships are primarily evaluated based on a limited set of parameters:
These criteria are understandable. They are simple, comparable, and easy to include in chartering decisions. But they also create a situation where ships designed for better overall performance can be rejected before their real advantages are even considered.
Standard Dimension
Designers quickly learn where the invisible boundaries exist. If the market expects an MR tanker to be approximately 183 × 32.2 m, very few owners are willing to accept even small deviations, even when hydrodynamic or operational benefits could outweigh the perceived risks.
If a new design is slightly different — for example, 185 meters instead of 183 meters — it may immediately face a disadvantage.
The concern is understandable: there may be a port, terminal, canal, or loading facility where the vessel cannot operate. However, in many cases, the ship is rejected not because there is a confirmed limitation, but because the possibility of a limitation exists.
This creates a conservative selection process where a vessel can be excluded based on assumptions rather than actual operational restrictions.
The result is that designers are pushed toward making ships look similar rather than developing designs optimized for the future.
Fuel Consumption
Another major limitation is how fuel consumption is compared.
Most performance figures are presented at:
This creates a very narrow view of efficiency.
In reality, ships rarely operate continuously at these design conditions. An MR tanker may sail at different speeds, operate in different weather conditions, carry different cargo volumes, and spend significant time in ballast or partial-load conditions.
A vessel that is optimized only for a single operating point may appear superior in a traditional comparison, while a more versatile vessel may perform better across the actual operational profile.
The industry often rewards the ship that is best on paper at one condition rather than the ship that performs best throughout its lifetime.
A vessel that consumes 23.8 t/day at the contractual design point may consume less fuel over an entire trading year than a vessel advertised at 23.4 t/day if it performs better during ballast voyages, partial-load operation and adverse weather.
Sea Margin
Fuel consumption figures are also commonly presented without fully reflecting the effect of weather and operational conditions.
The concept of sea margin exists because ships operate in real oceans, not in calm-water test environments. Wind, waves, and currents increase power demand and fuel consumption.
A hull designed to maintain performance in rough conditions may therefore have a significant real-world advantage.
Two vessels with identical calm-water fuel consumption may behave very differently once waves and wind are introduced.
Hull concepts that reduce added resistance in waves and maintain propulsive efficiency may therefore deliver significantly lower annual fuel consumption without showing any advantage in conventional comparison tables.
For example, hull concepts such as the FKAB F-bow are designed to reduce resistance and maintain efficiency in realistic operating conditions. However, if evaluation criteria only consider calm-water design-point consumption, these advantages are difficult to quantify and may not influence the selection process.
The industry risks rewarding laboratory performance rather than operational performance.
Technologies
Another example is efficiency gained through design integration and technology.
Many modern solutions reduce auxiliary power demand through technologies such as optimized electrical systems variable speed drives, waste heat recovery, peak shaving, advanced power management and improved HVAC integration.
However, these improvements often do not appear in the standard comparison figures used during chartering decisions.
This creates an investment problem.
A vessel with advanced energy-saving features may require:
But if the resulting savings are not visible in the selection process, the additional investment becomes a disadvantage rather than a competitive advantage.
The industry is effectively asking for greener ships while evaluating them using criteria that do not reward many forms of efficiency.
CAPEX and OPEX
A major structural issue is the separation between those who invest in ships and those who benefit from efficiency.
Ship owners often pay the additional cost for improved designs, while charterers and cargo owners may receive much of the operational benefit through reduced fuel consumption.
This creates a classic split-incentive problem.
The owner pays today.
The charterer saves tomorrow.
If the market fails to recognize lifecycle savings, there is little financial motivation to move beyond the conventional design. Even if the increased CAPEX is motivated not only by a decreased environmental footprint but also by reduced operating costs, it will never materialize if it reduces the chance for a charter for the ship.
The most efficient ship is not always the one with the lowest purchase price — it is the one with the lowest total cost over years of operation.
Broader Perspective
For decades, significant efficiency improvements have been achieved through hull optimization. Better hydrodynamics, optimized bow designs and improved propulsion integration have delivered substantial gains.
However, much of the easily accessible potential from conventional hull optimization has already been captured. Future improvements are increasingly likely to come from combining optimized hull forms with broader approaches, including:
The challenge is that many of these improvements are difficult to capture using today’s selection criteria. If the market continues to focus primarily on dimensions, cargo capacity and design-point fuel consumption, innovations that reduce lifetime operating costs may never receive the commercial recognition they deserve.
These innovations will only be widely adopted if the vessel evaluation process evolves to recognize their true operational value.
Performance Based Selection
The maritime industry has achieved impressive efficiency improvements within the limitations of today’s evaluation methods. However, further progress will increasingly depend not only on better ship designs, but also on better ways of comparing them.
Rather than focusing primarily on:
the industry should increasingly evaluate:
A ship should not be considered efficient simply because it performs well on a specification sheet. It should be considered efficient because it delivers the best overall performance throughout its operational life.
The maritime industry has become exceptionally good at comparing ships. The next challenge is ensuring that we compare the right things.
If today’s selection criteria remain unchanged, many of tomorrow’s most efficient ship designs may never reach the market, not because they perform worse, but because their true value is never measured.
Today’s evaluation
Tomorrow’s evaluation
By broadening the evaluation process, owners, charterers and cargo owners can unlock the next generation of efficiency improvements—not by encouraging ships to be different for the sake of being different, but by allowing genuinely better ship designs to compete on their true operational merits.
Work with FKAB Marine Design to pioneer the next generation of sustainable shipping