Carbon capture and storage is expected to play a major role in the decarbonisation of shipping and other industries. Whether that captured carbon is sent for permanent storage or is purified for further industrial use, specialist vessels will need to be built to ship the gas.

Converting LNG gas tankers to floating LNG storage units is a complex business. It requires merging ship design with LNG industry processing equipment arrangements, with stability and weight key issues.

Data centres are a drain on critical power and water supplies, raising concerns about competing costs for resources. Floating data centres can solve many of the concerns around this technology.

The Royal Navy has completed a six-week AUKUS Pillar 2 trial with the US and Royal Australian Navies, testing uncrewed technology to protect critical undersea infrastructure off the US coasts and southwestern Australia. 

QinetiQ has installed an additive manufacturing facility at HM Naval Base Clyde, enabling submarine components to be printed and delivered dockside on demand.

Naval architects face a compressed design programme under the UK's £300bn Defence Investment Plan, which replaces the Type 83 destroyer with the Common Combat Vessel, a hybrid warship coordinating four new uncrewed classes.

Fully electric, eCSOV’s are being designed in Spain for Bibby Marine. Battery power, with enough energy to power a CSOV for 24hours, will increase efficiency and cut costs according to the company. New and more thermally stable batteries will aid the transition.

Power generation and offshore support vessels are both in the frame to benefit from fourth-generation small modular nuclear reactors. Ulsteinvik and Island Offshore explore the possibilities.

Deeper, more exposed and less accessible fossil fuel reserves require more sophisticated offshore support vessel designs. With floating LNG increasingly in demand to help access and process fuels.

Vessel owners of 10-year-old ships are going through a mid-life crisis. To retrofit or not to retrofit, that is the question? Can investments in energy savings be recovered in these not old, but not new ships.

The digital age is transforming the ship repair industry as online monitoring and digital twins linked to a burgeoning predictive maintenance regime takes hold.

Visibility is becoming increasingly critical as charterers must now calculate Scope 3 emissions from their supply chains. Speed optimisation is helping to reduce the total.