Today, PRIME Marine announced its partnership with Marsoft Inc. whereby 8 vessels in the PRIME fleet will be enrolled in the GreenScreen program, and create a Gold Standard carbon reduction project later this year.

Gold Standard, the pre-eminent global carbon registry, last year accepted Marsoft’s GreenScreen-based methodology as the basis for issuing carbon credits for investments that reduce CO2 emissions from ships.

“We are very pleased to be working with PRIME, a leader in the Hellenic product tanker and LPG sector”, said Arlie Sterling, President of Marsoft Inc. “The efforts of the PRIME team on the decarbonization front have been exemplary, and we look forward to working together to issue carbon credits”.

“Marsoft’s GreenScreen will help us measure and verify some of our decarbonization investments”, said Stavros Niotis, Chief Sustainability Officer of PRIME Marine. “Over the past few years we have been proactively working on and investing in proper tools for monitoring our fleet’s performance and emissions as well as researching suitable technologies for achieving our decarbonization goals well beyond the IMO’s GHG Strategy timeline”. He further added: “We have plans for more investments in reducing the environmental footprint of our fleet and Marsoft’s GreenScreen project will assist us in this direction”.

“We are moving quickly to take advantage of Marsoft’s breakthrough, with a fleet of 8 LR1 product tanker ships. Our goal is to enroll in a Gold Standard project this year, in order to make the most of this unique opportunity”, Niotis concluded.

The GreenScreen Program

“Last year” Sterling continues, “the Gold Standard carbon registry recognized the reliability, speed, and cost effectiveness of Marsoft’s proprietary GreenScreen platform. The GreenScreen breakthrough eliminates barriers which until now have made it impractical for shipping to access the carbon credit markets.”

Retrofits reduce CO2 emissions now, and extend the trading life of the existing fleet, thereby delaying the need to make long lived, expensive, and risky newbuilding investment decisions while carbon-free fuels are not yet available. Green Screen and Gold Standard have just made it easier to reduce shipping’s carbon footprint now and in the future.

Marsoft collaborated with the MIT Sea Grant Program Design Lab to create the analytical foundation of its GreenScreen models. According to Dr. Hauke Kite-Powell, Marsoft’s GreenScreen Chief Technical Officer, “The MIT collaboration allowed us to take advantage of the best in naval architecture, tank testing, and software design. The rigorous, science-based foundation of the GreenScreen model was a critical factor in the Gold Standard’s positive assessment of our methodology.” The MIT Sea Grant Design Lab code supports accurate resistance, brake power, and fuel consumption calculations, and is incorporated into Marsoft’s GreenScreen to allow rapid assessment of fuel and emissions savings from a large range of energy saving investments. There are more than 10,000 vessels that can benefit now from retrofits and carbon credits. Evolving regulatory measures and climate policy changes are likely to shift the goal post for shipping and could shorten the window to qualify; owners should act now to ensure recognition of their emission saving investments.