Emissions-Focused AI Project Secures Funding
A project, GASS, led by Navtor, with six other Norwegian research, innovation and industry partners, has been awarded 44 million Norwegian kroner to develop new commercial AI-enhanced technology and services to optimize the energy usage of vessels and ships.
Navtor, Grieg Star, Maritime CleanTech, Scandinavian Reach Technologies, Simula Research Laboratory, SinOceanic Shipping and Sustainable Energy are partnering on the project which will enable vessel owners and operators to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to the green transition by enhancing vessel performance to maintain competitiveness and comply with new regulations and agreements.
They say: “Today, there are no systematic data‐driven solutions for improving energy efficiency onboard, mainly due to the complexity of ship operating environments, as well as the high complexity of data processing, such as AIS data, which is often incomplete and unreliable.”
“Navtor considers this a significant step forward in our efforts towards sustainable shipping. We incorporate a great amount of data from vessels and combine these with a digital twin to develop services that can monitor, analyze, and optimize fuel consumption,” comments Bjørn Åge Hjøllo, Chief Sustainability Officer at Navtor.
Simula notes that existing solutions to this problem rely on sparse data sources and simplified assumptions about a vessel and its environment when optimizing vessel and voyage performance, resulting in suboptimal energy usage. GASS will challenge these established solutions by leveraging massive data sources to improve the energy efficiency of voyages through a range of operations, including the use of new AI technologies to optimize voyage routing and speed.
If the GASS services are adopted by 30% of vessel owners and operators, it would lead to a substantial one percent reduction in the global greenhouse gas emissions, says Simula.
GASS is one of nine green projects to receive funding through the Norwegian Government’s Green Platform scheme.