Project PAYS (Pay-As-You-Save) 1

Improving energy efficiency is a no-regrets approach when it comes to minimising fuel consumption and its associated costs.

Achieving the IMO’s indicative checkpoint of 20%–30% absolute GHG emission reduction by 2030 will require a step change in the adoption of energy efficiency technologies (EETs), on top of the beginning of green fuels uptake.

And this urgency continues into the longer term, where green fuels are limited in availability, have lower volumetric energy densities than conventional fossil fuels, and command hefty premiums, using less fuel of any kind becomes increasingly important to achieve industry decarbonisation targets.

The case for the initiative

Slow and patchy implementation of technological efficiency measures pose challenges to meeting IMO’s goal.

Two key hurdles stand in the way. 

First, the variable operating conditions of ships lead to data variability and uncertainty, making it difficult to assess the true impact of energy efficient technologies.

Second, shipowners often bear the upfront costs of implementing efficiency measures, while the fuel savings and economic benefits flow to charterers, creating a split incentive problem that discourages widespread adoption.

Pay-As-You-Save, a financing model that has been successfully used in other sectors to accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency solutions, leverages transparent data sharing. This allows stakeholders to verify fuel savings and attribute them to specific technologies. 

This initiative investigates the potential of this performance-linked financing model to unlock deeper investments, and to drive the industry forward to meet the IMO’s ambitious targets. 

Scope of the pilot

Our pilots will focus on trialling complete solutions premised on a shared risks approach, encompassing agreements that govern technology installation on board vessels, validate data that is collected, and define metrics and triggers for data-driven financing.

Structured in three components, the pilot will:

• Focus on establishing binding agreements between project partners to create a precedent for a scalable solution
  
  
• Oversee the actual installation of the nominated EET and execution of these agreements
  
  
• Through a series of real-world pilots that will iteratively test key variables, a portfolio of contracts, methodologies and datasets will be developed for mass industry adoption.