Maritime’s Push to Net Zero Fuels a Growing Need for Connectivity
The maritime industry is going through a period of digitalization to maximize efficiencies and meet tough new regulations around carbon emissions. As ship operators adopt new digital technologies and upgrade aging fleets, the need for connectivity has never been greater.
Shipping companies are now able to use AI and look at expenses and fuel usage in more granular details than ever before. These advanced applications demand enterprise-grade satellite connectivity to reach their full potential.
Commercial maritime shipping is facing dramatic changes in regulation to move toward zero carbon emissions by the turn of the century. Last year, countries in the International Maritime Organization set a goal to reach net zero carbon emissions around 2050. For an industry where ships are meant to be in service for decades, this presents a challenge.
Alexandros Giouzenis, CTO of maritime technology provider Navarino, says these new regulations, especially in the EU, force companies to raise their game or face steep fines. The regulations have created a need for new solutions to manage operational efficiencies and for the connectivity to power these solutions.
“When I first saw [what shipping companies are paying to authorities], I thought there was something wrong. It is a significant chunk of their operating expenses just to be able to offset their emissions,” Giouzenis says. “They are all trying to find ways to reduce their emissions. They have turned to technology solutions that optimize routes and consumption of the vessel.”
To deal with these regulations commercial ships are going digital — adding sensors to keep track of emissions, machine conditions, propulsion data, and structural integrity. High-throughput satellite connectivity enables shipping companies to upload all the analytics and metrics data, in order to better optimize routing and energy consumption.
It’s not always influencing the obvious decision like a vessel’s route. “Sometimes the system will say don’t get paper supplies from this port but wait to the next port, because you get a better deal there. AI/ML helps quantify every insight. This has created huge efficiencies,” Giouzenis says.
“There are things you never would have thought of — such as the best time to paint and clean a vessel,” he adds. “They are feeding all these things into AI analytics. The details are staggering.”
Advanced applications underpin greater demand for connectivity. While in the past, merchant shipping companies used to view connectivity as ‘nice to have’ for operations, it is now a necessity to keep data flowing to shore at all times.
Navarino works with maritime customers to understand how their needs are different across vessel profiles and to tailor connectivity solutions to the customer.
“It has become embedded and necessary for vessel operations,” Giouzenis says. “Shipping companies can no longer accept going without connectivity. They have built their operational infrastructure on having connectivity. If a vessel goes offline, it is a crisis. Operations would be impaired. It is part of the working of the vessel.”
Growing Use of Onboard AI
A recent report by StartUs Insights identified Artificial Intelligence and clean energy as the top trends in the maritime industry in 2024. AI is used in predictive maintenance, autonomous navigation, and route optimization, which can help businesses optimize fuel efficiency, maintenance, and operational costs.
Experts say these two trends interact, as AI technology is increasingly used to help ships reach lower emissions.
Mike McNally, Director of Maritime Products for Intelsat, sees these trends in action. Making sure vessels travel at optimum speed on their routes has become a major issue. Vessels can be fined for reaching port too early because ports do not want idle ships in the harbor emitting carbon.
“The coordination of data between ports and vessel operations, charters, and requirements – this all has to come together,” McNally says. “There is tremendous work being done on standardizing the data flow. You always need to be able to report and confirm the information is needed.”
Sumanth Dhananjaya, Senior Principal Product Manager of Intelsat, agrees that the amount of data being processed in the maritime industry has increased significantly. For example, ship captains have to file more reports to meet safety and port requirements. AI can help here, functioning like an executive assistant to the captain, Dhananjaya says, summing up multiple threads to email to provide a summary.
The reliable, resilient connectivity that an enterprise-grade satellite solution delivers is key to enabling these advanced technology applications such as predictive engine maintenance and augmented reality for repairs.
“These applications require a lot of data on board the vessel, but then they can be processed locally, as well as offshore,” Dhananjaya says. “All of this is enabled by reliable connectivity. AI and ML are here to stay. We see a big movement in those trends picking up and a lot of applications coming onto the vessels.”
Giouzenis sees big shipping companies leading the way, hiring large teams of employees focused on AI to perform their own analytics. Some of these companies see a 15 percent operational expense reduction as a result of doing analytics like this. He believes the industry is seeing a trickle-down effect, with smaller companies now following the lead of the big companies for a more prolific adoption of AI/ML.
“Many smaller companies may not have the resources to undertake the analysis on their own, but solutions are being developed to help them to do their own analytics. I think this will be the trend for the next few years. Even small companies will start adopting it and trying to use it for optimization purposes,” he adds.
Connectivity Powers Digitalization
As vessels increasingly leverage digital technology to improve their operations, their bandwidth demands are increasing. At the same time, advances in satellite technology enable maritime operations to stay connected in a way that was not possible before.
Dhananjaya says that in this changing landscape, a multi-orbit connection is key. A mix of Geostationary Orbit (GEO) software-defined satellites and low-latency Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) has the potential to offer a compelling solution to shipping companies.
LEO fulfills the requirements for low-latency applications, and GEO provides highly reliable connectivity. He explains that mission-critical applications onboard vessels rely on GEO connectivity. But LEO is used for crew usage, and can serve predictive maintenance and AI applications that will require lower latency.
“We appreciate that we need to support these applications, so we are kind of working with LEO operator OneWeb, to bring multi-orbit solutions to the market,” This is exactly where we are going with it,” Dhananjaya says.
Intelsat, which operates the world’s largest Geosynchronous satellite network, designed FlexMaritime as an enterprise-grade managed service specifically for the needs of maritime customers. Intelsat is also offering service with a combination of GEO and LEO connectivity, through a partnership with Eutelsat OneWeb.
McNally adds that while there is a lot of talk about the low latency that LEO satellites bring, Intelsat is focused on consistent latency for a low jitter experience.
“Low jitter is a very important element to cloud applications and any real-time applications that you might have,” McNally says. “Our next-generation is all based on virtualization going to the cloud. We deliver 550 to 650 milliseconds of latency which is very workable. With low jitter on top of that, it becomes a preferred connectivity approach to the cloud.”
Intelsat also takes a proactive approach to cybersecurity in its solutions. Shipping companies now require end-to-end security. Cybersecurity is only going to become a bigger issue as interconnected networks become the norm for shipping companies.
Dhananjaya says shipping companies will deal with more cybersecurity compliance issues in the future from port authorities to ensure that the data is always secure end-to-end.
“As a connectivity provider, we play a major role. Our role in connectivity is from the satellite perspective to the ground infrastructure on one end, and from the satellite perspective to the vessel on the other end,” he says. “We need to ensure connectivity is compliant with all of the necessary layers of security protocols. We play a big role to support our solutions partners to develop their applications for end users.”
Intelsat’s enterprise-grade network offers comprehensive, end-to-end security woven into the fabric of the network and procedures ensuring accountability at the highest level.
While the maritime shipping sector is hungry to improve efficiencies, avoid large fines, and keep costs down, satellite providers report a surge in demand for bandwidth. McNally says Intelsat has seen 40 percent growth of data on an average terminal across its partners.
“The number of terminals supported has grown. The amount of data we are moving across those terminals has grown. We are being very flexible in rolling out new products and services that meet these enhanced demands that the market is showing. The needle is moving up and in the right direction,” McNally says.
Maritime is going through a dramatic transformation. It was not that long ago where ships were barely connected, and connected ships were using very slow, narrow connections. That has now changed as shipping companies enthusiastically embrace a new data-driven era to improve efficiencies and transition to a net-zero future.
Intelsat FlexMaritime is specifically designed for global commercial maritime trade routes. Due to the size, breadth and redundancy of Intelsat’s fleet, ship owners and operators can be assured they will continue to receive connectivity. Contact Intelsat or your service provider for more information about FlexMaritime.
Built with Shorthand