Appraisal and regulation of the ship energy performance

The ship may be viewed as a living environment associated with two industrial environments, one corresponding to the transport industry and other one to the processing, services, or other specific type of industry developed aboard. Each environment has its own energy system and changes energy with the other two. Nowadays, the appraisal and regulation of the ship energy performance is based on the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI). Its definition covers the three mentioned systems, without distinction between them. This paper addresses the assessment and regulation of the ship energy performance, bearing in mind that, by far, the main purpose is to increase the level of performance by selecting, from the available measures of performance improvement, those that are the most effective. The paper highlights the EEDI shortcomings, explaining that they appear mainly due the fact that this index covers a couple of energy systems that are far too different (though these energy systems are intimately interpenetrated).