- Economic feasibility, Financial, Lengthening, Profitable
Inland waterway vessels are considered the cleanest land based transport mode in terms of its CO2 emissions on a per ton-km basis. However other modes are quickly catching up and speeding up is needed to maintain the IWT green character. For some
emission categories (NOx, PM), road transport is already outperforming IWT. One reason for IWT to lag behind other modes is the long technical and economic lifetime of ships, which can easily extend 50 years. The replacement rate of the fleet is therefore
rather low. This means, by modernising just through replacing older vessels by newer ones, the sector may become bypassed by other transport sectors soon. Therefore, action is needed targeting the existing IW fleet. To improve the performance of the
inland waterway sector especially the existing fleet should be modernized. Currently there is insufficient knowledge about how to modernize the inland waterway fleet efficiently.
The MoVe IT! project aims to develop concrete applications that can be installed on existing ships. WP 6 focuses on the most common old vessels in the fleet. WP6 can be split in two clusters. The first cluster analyses the options to improve the competitive
position of relatively small vessels in the fleet (CEMT II and III) by lengthening them (with a goal to reach CEMT IV). The second cluster assesses new market opportunities for single hull tankers. This report is the last step of the first cluster where the economic
and environmental feasibility of the lengthening steps are assessed.
Lengthening of small inland vessels (by contemporary standards) is found to be economically feasible. It seems that vessels that fall within the CEMT II and III class can benefit of this retrofit option, as is shown from the business cases for the MV Hendrik
and the MV Rheinland conducted in this task. Based on the analysis done and also in line with the results of the lengthening done in WP 7.2, inland vessels already need to have a critical mass to ensure that the lengthening will be economically feasible. If a
vessel is too small, as is the case for e.g. the MV Rheinland, lengthening will be less feasible, especially when the vessel is only lengthened with 6 metres. To make lengthening a feasible option the benefits need to outweigh the investment costs.
From an economic and environmental perspective it seems feasible to install a propeller in nozzle instead of a naked propeller. The propeller in nozzle is able to reduce the fuel consumption and therefore the impact of CO2 emissions. To have full economical and environmental effects, the speed should be reduced, but speed reduction has a cost too and is not as easy as it sounds.