Emissions — CII, EU ETS, FuelEU
The same fuel figure that answers "how much will this leg cost" also answers "how much CO₂ did it produce". This is how VPM gets there, and the one angle on it that is genuinely under-served: the emissions of voyages that carried nothing.
The regulatory backdrop
Shipping emissions moved from voluntary to mandatory in quick succession: the IMO's Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) now scores each ship annually; the EU Emissions Trading System extended to shipping, so operators surrender allowances for CO₂ on EU-related voyages; and FuelEU Maritime sets a declining limit on the greenhouse-gas intensity of the energy ships use in EU waters. All three turn a tonne of fuel burned into a number on a balance sheet.
From fuel to CO₂
VPM already estimates the fuel burned on each leg — from the vessel's machinery and its speed, along the real sea route, split by grade inside and outside emission-control zones. See the fuel & cost model for how. Turning that into CO₂ uses a standard, published conversion for each fuel grade: burning a tonne of oil-based marine fuel releases a little over three tonnes of CO₂, and LNG somewhat less, before methane slip is taken into account. Applied leg by leg, this gives a voyage-level tank-to-wake CO₂ figure on the same basis CII and EU ETS use.
Per voyage, per vessel, per operator
Because the estimate is built leg by leg, it rolls up cleanly:
- A single voyage — fuel, cost and CO₂ for the leg to the next port.
- A vessel over a period — total burn and emissions across its tracked calls.
- An operator's fleet in a region — the aggregate, and how it is trending.
The ballast angle
A vessel sailing in ballast burns almost as much fuel as one carrying cargo, and does no transport work for it. In carbon-intensity terms, a ballast leg is the worst possible unit of emission — full cost, zero output.
VPM knows, from draught, which legs were sailed in ballast. Combine that with the fuel model and a figure falls out that almost no one reports:
"X% of this operator's Baltic mileage over the quarter was ballast, accounting for Y tonnes of CO₂ produced without moving cargo."
That is a number an owner wants for their own reporting, an insurer wants for risk, and an ESG desk wants for screening. It is a near-free layer on top of work already done.
Why this figure is robust
This use of VPM does not depend on prediction accuracy improving. It describes what already happened — did this vessel sail laden or in ballast, how far, at what speed — not what it will do next. The forecasting model can be having a bad week and the emissions rollup is unaffected.
Who it is for
- Owners and operators — a running estimate ahead of formal MRV reporting, and a way to see ballast waste before the annual number lands.
- Charterers — voyage CO₂ as part of vetting a fixture.
- Insurers and ESG analysts — a behavioural signal, fleet-wide, without waiting for filed data.