Shipping and Green Steel - Blog Posts 4 out of 4

In June 2023, the Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI) published a remarkable report on green steel and shipping. You can access SSI's web site and find the full report here: Green steel and shipping – Sustainable Shipping 

The inquiry is undertaken under the 4 headlines of Knowledge, Business Model, Regulation and Technology. Addressing those headlines in turn, our first three posts in a series of four looked at the Knowledge, Business Model and Regulation headlines. In this fourth post, we look into the drivers and barriers listed under the Technology headline. We first list SSI's text, then our contribution.

Technology Drivers (quoted from the report): 

"Improving traceability of steel across a ship's lifecycle through e.g., the implementation of standardised frameworks and material passports can be a key driver to uptake of green steel for shipping. Data sharing and cross-sectoral collaborative efforts are needed to show this is possible."

Our digital platform encompasses the entire value chain, optimises the journey and provides the tracking and tracing that is required to enable passports, certificates etc. In addition, we can act as the trusted third party with which data can be shared and anonymised, such that data disclosure anxieties can be catered for. 

"Digital technologies can offer solutions for greater traceability and visibility of the steel value chain and allow for the verification of GHG emissions savings and sustainability benefits associated with green steel."

This is of course exactly what we were set up to do, and what our digital platform takes care of. 

Technology Barriers (quoted from the report): 

"Low market demand for ships designed for circularity."

Through our platform's scenario planning ability, various designs and their impacts will be able to be analysed in a dismantling and recycling context, providing the data required to visualize the benefits - both in terms of emissions and economy - of design for greater circularity. Life Cycle Assessment providers have already analysed that designing and operating for orderly recycling of ships can save in the order of 20% of GHG emissions. With further optimization of the circular steel journey itself, we believe that emissions can be further reduced by at least 30%, and in future with much more than that.

"Traceability of steel can be inhibited by complex value chains and the presence of multiple actors, which can make it challenging to obtain and maintain accurate and comprehensive data."

The data bases at the foundation of our digital platform are extremely comprehensive and will therefore allow transparency and traceability throughout the circular steel value chain. It is part of our task to ensure that our data bases are up to date at any time, and by doing so, we can save the shipping industry much unnecessary work compared to maintaining separate data bases for each ship owner's own occasional use. 

"Lack of a standardised frameworks for developing and implementing tracing systems and material passports."

This is a chicken-and-egg situation, but once our digital platform has proven itself, we expect that standardised frameworks can be developed based on our findings, and we expect to contribute towards standards setting and regulation along the way.

In short, our digital platform and business model provide the technology with which to overcome the barriers and improve significantly on the circularity of shipping steel.