Impact Today Working Group
The aim of Impact Today
Recognising the challenges posed by climate change, ZeroNorth, together with its partners and customers, initiated a working group to collaborate across the global shipping industry to create standards which reduce immediate emissions and shipping's impact on the climate.
The aim of Impact Today is to tackle challenges stopping immediate CO2 reductions through increased standardisation and to accelerate the transition to greener global trade. The importance of optimisation through digital platforms as a critical first step on the decarbonisation journey - together with longer term initiatives such as clean fuels and vessel optimisations - makes it important to improve transparency and standardisation of data. This group works to discover a better, smarter way to work and to solve key challenges that could be standing in the way of our industry's mission to decarbonise.
Join the next Impact Today Meeting
The group works to discover a better, smarter way to work and to solve key challenges that could be standing in the way of our industry's mission to decarbonise
Our Background
This group was originally formed in an effort to drive shipping’s decarbonisation pathway by exploring fuel consumption model accuracy. The aim was to start discussions around the creation of a standard measurement system good enough to use as a foundation for voyage optimisation. The increasing importance of voyage optimisation, along with the implementation of clean fuels and vessel optimisation, as the critical tools for the industry's ambition to reach zero emissions makes it important to improve the transparency and standardisation of data.
Our Journey
In March of 2021, ZeroNorth, acknowledging the necessity of collaboration, formed Impact Today, bringing together companies from all across the shipping industry with a common vision in mind, decarbonisation. The fight against climate change is not a battle any individual actor can manoeuvre. To make the changes that our planet needs while managing ever increasing trade volumes, we need to work together. Impact Today’s partnerships connect ship owners and operators with technology companies in an unprecedented way with the potential to make a serious impact. The founding of Impact Today with the support of Ultrabulk, Westernbulk, Cargill, Bearing, Maersk Tankers, and Propulsion Dynamics opened the door to our ambitions of a greener, healthier Earth. Every member of Impact Today is committed to a future of sustainable and efficient global trade.
The Opportunity
ZeroNorth believes that shipping must be collaborative to accelerate digital impact; building partnerships and software that connects suppliers, owners, and charterers. In short, the sheer scale of the industry means that no one player can solve all these challenges on their own. The potential to accelerate our collective efforts to cut costs and reduce emissions is massive, so we look forward to more fruitful collaboration with the working group.
Currently the group is made up of 12 companies and 27 participants. The group includes other fuel consumption model providers as well as other digital platforms offering voyage optimisation. We are an open group with room for more to join. The qualifications are that an organisation or person must have an interest in participating in the decarbonisation journey of the maritime sector and are open to collaboration and addressing complex issues with suitable solutions to be used as a first step with continued work towards industry-wide adoption. We believe that by working together we can collectively achieve more towards our industry's need to reach zero emissions.
What we are working on
Together we all share the goal of solving a vital industry challenge: decarbonisation. Figuring out where we start and what we can achieve today is the focus of this group. A key step towards a greener fleet is the measuring of fuel efficiency and the quantifying of environmental impacts. The data used for such evaluations must be of high quality in order to draw actionable conclusions. However, there is neither a common definition of acceptable data quality in this context nor an aligned approach as to how the availability of good data can be ensured across the industry. Our sessions are currently addressing the issue of data quality. If you are interested in joining the working group, please reach out.
Impact Today Initiatives
Output 1
The first output of the working group was to formulate an industry-wide standard to measure fuel consumption model accuracy. The roundtable workshops, with eleven participating companies - spanning from ship owners, operators and managers to fuel consumption model providers and voyage optimisation software companies including Cargill, Ultrabulk A/S, PropulsionDynamic, Western Bulk , Bearing and Maersk Tankers - formulated an accuracy benchmark to assess fuel consumption model accuracy and positively impact voyage optimisation as a result. Please see the new release on this project click here. This standard continues to be improved and tested with the hope for it to be fully accepted and used by the industry as the standard benchmark for fuel consumption accuracy. Read the White Paper here.