Institute of Transportation, MOTC

       The international bunker supply and demand markets have been greatly influenced by the 2020 global sulphur cap, making fuel cost control one of the key factors of competitive advantage for shipping companies. Since energy efficiency improvement of bulk carriers is not only closely related to ship characteristics and energy-saving technologies, this research considered both the characteristics and operation models of the bulk shipping market. It first collected energy-saving technologies by questionnaires and interviews; then examined the resource allocation of ship energy efficiency improvement and the operational demands of influential departments by the importance-performance analysis and the fuzzy quality function deployment. The service quality demand
dimension was set up to explore the implementation importance of each improvement technology. It was found that there is a significant difference between the tonnage of bulk ships and the proportion of energy consumption. The higher the fuel consumption of the main engine the larger the tonnage of the ship. Therefore, if large bulk carriers strengthen the maintenance of high-relevance indicators, including “Reducing Ship Resistance,” “Improving Ship Propulsive Efficiency,” and “Voyage Optimization,” they can yield twice the result with half the effort. On the other hand, the shipping companies manage and dispatch the quality of foreign seafarers through labor broker agencies due to the rapid development of coastal economy in China. However, the lack of incentives for salaries made senior ordinary seafarers return to hometown or switch jobs. As a consequence, the demand indicator of “Personnel Competence and Quality” has become an important issue forimproving the energy efficiency of bulk carriers.