Dutch maritime start-up We4Sea secured funding from ENERGIIQ, Mainport Innovation Fund II and angel investors to accelerate development and roll out of its fuel and emissions monitoring platform. Based in Delft, Netherlands, We4Sea has an ambitious goal of saving 1 million tons of CO2 emissions from ships. Speaking with Digital Ship, CEO and cofounder of We4Sea‘s Dan Veen explained that the company developed a monitoring platform and Digital Twin to monitor, report, and optimize fuel consumption of any given vessel. Based on just an IMO number and vessel name, We4Sea can start tracking a ship’s location, sailing speed, and weather conditions, and then calculate fuel consumption almost immediately.

We4Sea’s concept is unique, as it requires no hardware thanks to its Digital Twin. With this software-only technology, We4Sea can provide highly accurate calculations of a ship’s fuel use and emissions to parties that do not have direct access to the ship, such as charterers and providers of ship financing.

We4Sea’s performance-monitoring platform allows cargo, fleet and shipowners to follow the performance of their ships and cargo. Based on location and speed data of the ship, combined with meteorological and seastate data, the instantaneous performance of the ship and each of its components is simulated and displayed. Fuel consumption and emissions are presented and can be calibrated with actual on-board measurements. The performance-monitoring dashboard gives insight in the actual usage of your fleet, the relative performance of your fleet compared to similarly sized vessels, and an overview of well-performing components and “efficiency killers.” The performance-monitoring dashboard is the first step towards efficiency improvement.

For a ship with average fuel consumption, savings can add up to thousands of tons of CO2 emissions and tens of thousands of Euros a year. “We’re proud of the growth achieved in recent years, but there’s still a wealth of opportunities that will help us improve our product, connect with more customers and expand the market. This is in line with our mission to prevent one million tons of CO2 emissions from shipping,” explained Dan Veen.

Nienke Vledder, ENERGIIQ fund manager, commented: “ENERGIIQ is delighted and congratulates We4Sea with the growth investment it secured through Mainport Innovation Fund II, angel investors, and ENERGIIQ. We4Sea’s Digital Twin offers customers transparency in fuel consumption, helps them reduce CO2 emissions drastically, which leads to significant cost savings.”