Recap from WG meeting - Ocean-going cargo ships with batteries
Sep 22, 2025
WG - Ocean-going cargo ships with batteries - progress meeting
On August 6th the draft for the paper on "Regulations, Safety and Impact on Crew" was shared with all participants of the working group on ocean-going cargo ships with batteries for review. During the meeting on September 22nd the received feedback and comments were discussed and the steps to complete the paper were agreed upon.
Feedback on draft paper
- In the paper the following section received several comments during the review:
' In many regulations, battery suppliers are made responsible for crew training. However, not all safety equipment and procedures on battery-powered ships are designed or installed by the battery suppliers. The responsibility can be with either system integrators or the shipyards as well. Consequently, the responsibility for educating and properly training the crew with regards to safety, operation, and maintenance of battery systems shall be shared between all respective parties involved in the design, installation and operation of the battery system.'
The discussion focused on that it should be highlighted that crew training is a shared responsibility of multiple parties, and to describe the roles of these different parties at different stages of the vessel's life. This will be added in the revision of the paper.
- To improve the readability of the paper it was agreed that section 3.2 'Overview of crew training requirements' is to be moved to the annex of the paper, as the analysis of this part is more important and comes in section 3.3.
- The final step for completing the paper is to write the conclusions and recommendations. The recommendations will be highlighting the different stakeholders: Designers & builders / Ship owners & operators / Regulators & insurers
The discussed updates will be used to finalize the draft version of the paper. This draft will be sent out to all CIMAC and MBF members in the coming weeks for the final review of the paper.
