New maritime AI collaboration targets fuel efficiency and emission reduction

February 24, 2025, by Sara Kosmajac

The Cyprus-headquartered SmartSea, a logistics-oriented IT company, and the UAE-based provider of technological solutions Digital Energy AI have teamed up to explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in the marine and offshore energy sectors.

As disclosed, the all-embracing goal of the collaboration is to look into the ways in which artificial intelligence could ‘improve’ operational efficiency, predictive analysis as well as standardization in these two sectors.

To be precise, according to the two partners, the initiative was envisioned as a way to integrate, explore and test AI-driven analytics, ‘real-time’ monitoring and predictive maintenance.

In doing so, representatives from SmartSea and Digital Energy hope to create a set of solutions that could allow shipowners and operators to optimize their vessels’ fuel consumption and lower harmful pollutant emissions while staying in line with global environmental regulations.

AI’s expanding role in shipping

Artificial intelligence has rapidly found its place in the maritime industry. As the sector works toward its decarbonization goals by (or around) 2050, AI has been linked to an array of potential benefits, or rather stepping stones, that could steady the compass to net zero, such as route optimization, fuel and engine optimization, predictive maintenance, carbon emission monitoring et cetera.

A wide range of maritime industry stakeholders have endeavored to discover in which ways AI could help them better their fleets’ (environmental) performance. Finnish technology player Wärtsilä’s fleet operations solution (FOS), for instance, is understood to improve voyage planning, weather routing and fuel consumption monitoring.

In October 2024, a consortium of technology and shipping companies, with Wärtsilä as its member, embarked on a mission to make a new system for the maritime industry aimed at ‘enhancing’ access to reliable data and enabling smarter shipping decisions related to decarbonizing fleet operations.

As informed, the EU-backed project named TwinShip would comprise creating ‘definitive’ cost, performance and emission information based on “the best possible domain knowledge”. The partners shared that the insights would be further improved via advanced AI algorithms that can sift through extensive real-world test data.

EU-backed project to support decarbonization through ‘innovative’ decision-making system

Business Developments & Projects

Singapore’s ship management company Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) has also been using AI to cut down on fuel consumption and overall environmental impact.

In November 2024, after a six-month project with EPS, Greek AI-led maritime technology firm DeepSea Technologies unveiled that it had delivered weekly fuel consumption forecasts accurate to “within 1%”. This was reportedly done through real-time sensor data from EPS’ ships paired with DeepSea’s AI-backed Cassandra platform.