Data sharing will not save the planet

Perhaps it’s the after-effects of two years in which knowledge workers got to stay at home and manual workers worked, but suddenly the desire to share data and pool knowledge in the maritime industry seems to have taken a step backwards.

This will make inconvenient listening for shipping’s leaders who are exhorting it to work together and collaborate in order to achieve lower carbon operations and move towards some of the lofty pledges made at COP26.

Despite the climate imperative, it seems that commercial imperatives have survived COVID and are alive and well. Putting the greater good ahead of self interest has always been a challenge for shipping. No shipowner survives who insists that their customers are paying too much for freight or lets another ship get to the berth first.

But when the stakes are greater efficiency, lower fuel costs and ultimately the lowering of carbon emissions, there is some logic to pooling knowledge in order to improve efficiency of the global fleet. This already happens in vessel safety; numerous projects allow the sharing of near miss and close call data on an anonymous basis and the results have been dramatic in terms incident reductions.

The principal problem for decarbonization efforts is that the basis for sharing needs to be built on an equitable foundation. The split incentive that keeps owners, operators and charterers at loggerheads remains firmly in place. When innovation requires investment, why should one owner or shipper pay for something another will benefit from?

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