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The first milestone of the commitment is a report (M.Sc. thesis) giving the justification for the index to be proposed as well as defining preliminary methodology on what the index should consist of. With the index value, various ships operating in the Baltic Sea could be ranked according to their total environmental efficiencies. The report was completed in October 2010.

As the Baltic Sea is one of the most polluted sea areas in the world, particular attention was paid to the environmentally deteriorated and heavily eutrophicated state of the sea. Other special properties of the area, such as the annual ice cover and winter navigation, heavy maritime traffic and short sea shipping challenges were also taken into account in the model.

In order to understand the background of an environmental index, the various regulations, laws, classification societies’ rules and local directives for maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea region were studied. Existing environmental indexing systems for ranking various ships were also reviewed. The baseline in the index is that ships should utilize the best available technology today to pass the minimum requirements set in the index.

The Baltic Region Environmental Efficiency Index can be used to progress port and seaway fees levied on ships, thus giving discounts for environmentally friendly ships. This way the index would encourage shipping companies and operators to take actions towards sustainable, environmentally friendly shipping.

The index will take into account all emissions from ships, including air emissions, solid waste and waste waters. Each waste stream will be evaluated according to ship type, onboard waste management and how well discharges to air, sea and port facilities are handled. The Baltic Region Environmental Efficiency Index (BREEI) has been designed to work in junction with the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) and will therefore not be an overlapping method.

Developing the index and its methodolgy further will require active input from environmental agencies and other organizations in the Baltic region and close co-operation with relevant authorities. Deltamarin has approached the Finnish Transport Safety Agency (TraFi) in order to develop the index further as well as outline the possibilities to report the findings to HELCOM and the International Maritime Organization (IMO).