South Korea’s Hanwha Power has announced that it had received Approval in Principle (AiP) from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) for its design of a 1,700 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) battery-powered containership. A certificate presentation ceremony took place yesterday (22 October) at the Maritime Hybrid, Electric & Hydrogen Fuel Cells Conference & Exhibition 2026 in Bergen, Norway. The newly approved design concept features a fully electric container vessel powered by a large-scale 151 MWh Energy Storage System (ESS). Electrical energy stored in containerised battery units serves as the vessel’s primary propulsion source, enabling operation without direct carbon emissions through […]

Zero-emission vessels developer SWITCH Maritime has announced it has secured a Design Basis Agreement (DBA) with the United States Coast Guard (USCG) for a 150-passenger hydrogen fuel cell-electric ferry set to start operations in New York.  Designed by global naval architecture firm Incat Crowther, the SWITCH-150 is powered by an integrated hydrogen fuel cell-electric propulsion and hydrogen storage system that Wyoming-headquartered SWITCH says enables the vessel to perform ‘high-frequency, high-intensity’ ferry operations like an existing diesel vessel. ‘This means parallel service speeds, a daily bunkering schedule, and no need to increase dwell time or alter service to account for vessel […]

BIMCO says that its Energy Saving Device Retrofit Addendum will provide a new contractual framework that can ‘facilitate the installation of energy saving devices during the period of a time charter’. In a statement posted on its website today (21 October), the shipping association said that the Addendum will ‘provide owners and charterers with a flexible mechanism for agreeing how the costs, time, fuel-saving benefits and environmental benefits associated with retrofit projects should be allocated between them’. BIMCO said that the Addendum – which has been ‘deliberately drafted as a technology-neutral framework capable of accommodating a broad range of current […]