Methods for monitoring carbon emissions from ships: A practical perspective

Abstract

Monitoring carbon emissions from ships is crucial as part of the International Maritime Organization's (IMO) greenhouse gas emissions reduction action. The present study compared four methods for carbon emissions monitoring. A comprehensive analytical framework was established, and differences between direct measurements, ship-operational-data-based estimates, noon-report-based estimates, and automatic-identification-system (AIS)-based estimates were analyzed. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) The four methods generally produce consistent results, albeit with moderate differences. (2) No method is clearly superior to the others, and each has its relative merits in some scenarios. (3) To ensure compliance with IMO regulations, current approaches to monitoring emissions from fuel consumption should continue to be used, and noon-report data should be supplemented by operational data collected from automated information systems.