On Thursday February 23rd, Icebreaker One held an Innovation Workshop as part of our partnership with Lloyd’s Register. The project aims to give initiators and investors an understanding of how data sharing and risk model changes can expedite zero-emission ship financing.

Throughout the 8-week long project, we co-developed and researched key problem statements, identified relevant stakeholders, and began to understand the challenges stakeholders face in the transition to decarbonise the shipping industry. At the end of the project, we brought together key stakeholders in an innovation workshop to highlight challenges and solutions based upon our research and stakeholder experience.

The workshop presented the findings of our research, exploring the problem statements of barriers for data sharing including industry fragmentation, transparency challenges, different adoption rates of retro-fitting and new technologies, governance and infrastructure limitations, safety risks, ship owners of varying fleet sizes still required to meet the same emission targets, and the difficulty of sector-wide collaboration. We then had an iterative brainstorm tackling those challenges. Participants considered the question:

“In order to accelerate the transition to net zero shipping, how do we facilitate collaboration within the industry?”

During this fast moving brainstorm we gathered as many ideas as possible for how to connect the industry together, identified key ideas which emerged, and generated one-sentence solution ideas. Key themes which emerged include:

  • Data assurance is vital when using data to drive investment decisions
  • Need more granular data and consistent metrics to fully assess emissions
  • Fuel shifts are essential to decarbonise the industry in parallel with safety evaluations of new, alternative fuels
  • Key benefits and cost savings for clustering innovations to enable scaling for market-wide impact
  • Increase collaboration and informal data sharing amongst ship owners
  • Having longer term contracts allows for investment confidence by innovators
  • Total cost of ownership for technologies has to be considered
  • Verification of reductions is a key feedback mechanism