Potential to reduce environmental pollution from ships through the modular concept approach

In the current practice, ship design is generally approached with the aim of keeping building-cost at the minimum, often forcing low-cost designs and low value-added market solutions. This is particularly true for small- size passenger vessels designed for short-sea shipping which are usually built by small shipyards which cannot sustain high costs of innovation and investments in education and research. In addition, unlike other transport modes, vessels are generally produced in small series and the investment cost has a strong impact on the initial vessel cost. Therefore, ships are often based on previous concepts and designs with essentially no modernization, thus leading to poor energy efficiency improvements, high vessel life-cycle costs and significant environmental impact. The new regulations in shipping sector demand energy efficiency improvements, but the stakeholders lack in providing support in achieving these requirements. In order to increase competitiveness, changes are required not only in individual stages of a shipbuilding process, but integrally throughout the production process. Conventional design and production paradigm can be changed by developing a modular concept in ship design. The aim of this paper is to determine the potential to reduce environmental pollution from ships and thereby the externalities by applying modular concept for small passenger ships in the Mediterranean. This new concept for a high-efficiency passenger vessel class can facilitate the design process, reduce the initial cost of more technologically advanced vessels by allocating innovation costs to units in a much larger series, and thus prove as a viable and sustainable alternative.