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Canfornav discoversIt is Easy Being Green? Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Canfornav is a company which operates a fleet of more than 0 vessels, ranging in size from 27,000 to 7,000 DWT, carrying 12 million tons annually and performingmore than 400 voyages per year. Much like its shipowning brethren across the globe, the company is consistently under siege to make its operations not only more efficient, but more environmentally benign, in line with new and emerging regulations regarding the types and amounts of pollutants working vessels can emit in to the air and water. A testament to the company?s commitment to the environment is its vol- untary participation in reen Marine, a joint Canada- U.S. initiative aimed at implementing a marine industry environmental program throughout North America. ?We are motivated by our corporate re- sponsibility you don?t want to destroy your own backyard,? said Jason Crooks, operations, Canfornav. ?But beyond that, if you look at increasing your fleet?s environmental performance, you are in most instances also improving the overall performance of your fleet, so we see it as a win-win.? Further tes- tament is Canfornav?s commitment to the environ- ment is the adoption of ShipDecision?s comprehensive Emissions Performance Reporting program, a system which delivers to the company the capability to automatically update and instanta-neously monitor the fleetwide environmental footprint of its vessels, in compliance with the reen Marine Emissions Reporting requirements. ?One of my tasks in the Operation?s roup is to manage Canfornav?s compli- ance, and we did so initially with a manual system,? said Crooks. In essence, Crooks and his team were receiving a daily deluge of reports and information, their Noon Reports, from each ship. Some via text message, others in a spreadsheet format. ?Canfornav approached Stelvio, providers of the ShipDecision system, to explore ways to standardize the collection of information used to compile the reen Ma- rine reports. The new module basically lets us monitor the heartbeat of each ves- sel?s performance on a live, day-to-day basis.? ?We saw an opportunity to build a module that would not only permit Canfornav to meet their annual reen Marine reporting requirements, but that could also give them a daily snapshot of their reen Position,? said Albert R. Carbone, President, ShipDecision. ?At the beginning of the voyage, Canfornav Operations sends an email to the Master that contains the specially formatted off-line report for the voy- age. The Master fills in the data fields and presses the submit button.? Not only does Canfornav?s Operations department receive a consistent and uni- form daily report, the information is run to and through the ShipDecision servers, providing the shipowner with up to the minute reporting of ship performance. The following day, the Master opens the report and modifies only the data that has changed. ?Data received by the ShipDecision server is automatically tabulated on a per-vessel, per-voyage basis,? said Carbone. Emissions monitoring is a hot topic, and there are a number of potential solutionsavailable, including the installation of specialty emissions monitoring equipment. ?There are several different ways to do this (emissions monitoring) you can put all types of fancy gizmos to measure the gases coming out,? said Carbone. But he rea- sons that for a fraction of that investment cost, his ?soft? solution can provide a reasonably accurate measurement in a format that stands up to the scrutiny of gov- ernment audit. ?If people are accurately reporting the type and quantity of fuel they are burning, you can get an accuracy of 4 to 5 of the actual emission number,? said Carbone.? This is a Soft Solution that can help save hundreds of thousands of dol- lars.? The weakness is, and always will be, the integrity of the data at point of entry. ?If garbage data is put in garbage data is put out.? Jason Crooks, Canfornav Al Carbone, ShipDecisionJuly 2011www.marinelink.com 29