This paper describes the energy consumption performance of sea-going ships engaged in the EU27 seaborne trades based on data and parameters resulting from the EX-TREMIS (EXploring non road TRansport EMISsions in Europe) database. EX-TREMIS is a comprehensive database of fleet and transport activity data, specific energy consumption, emission factors and total emissions from rail, maritime and air transport in the European Union. The EX-TREMIS maritime model derives from a mixture of top-down and bottom-up approaches for estimating pollutant emissions from shipping activities. The model did not use direct observations of actual trips, but empirically derived the number of equivalentships. Cargo type shipments were linked to seven ship type categories for which a further segmentation by ship size (three length classes), type and age of the main engine and type of fuel was applied. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.