A new BIMCO addendum gives owners and charterers a practical way to agree how they will share the costs and benefits of installing energy-saving technology during a time charter.
The BIMCO Energy Saving Device Retrofit Addendum 2026 is designed to help overcome this challenge.
As the shipping industry works to cut emissions, improve fuel efficiency and respond to changing environmental regulations, investment in retrofitting existing ships will play an important role. However, deciding who pays for improvements and who benefits from the resulting fuel savings can make these projects commercially difficult.
When an owner pays for new equipment, some or all of the operational benefits may go to the charterer during the charter period. This can reduce the incentive to invest, even where a retrofit could deliver significant fuel savings and environmental benefits.
The new addendum provides a flexible contractual framework that owners and charterers can use to agree how the costs, time implications and benefits of an individual retrofit project will be shared. Rather than prescribing a particular commercial model, it allows the parties to find an arrangement that works for their specific project and charter.
The addendum is technology neutral, allowing it to be used for a broad range of existing and future energy-saving technologies.
It also takes account of the changing regulatory landscape by providing a framework that can accommodate both existing and future environmental schemes.
By giving owners and charterers a clearer basis for agreeing retrofit projects, the addendum is intended to make investment in energy-saving technology easier and support the industry's wider decarbonisation efforts.
The addendum will be available shortly and we will update this page with a link to it once it is published
