PNNL

With ships and seaports handling the vast majority of international trade, shipbuilding is critical to U.S. national security and economic interests; however, the United States currently manufactures less than one percent of the world’s commercial ships, and the U.S. commercial fleet is significantly older than the global average.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Maritime Blue, a Washington state-based strategic alliance promoting maritime business in the Pacific Northwest, have released a report highlighting challenges—and solutions—for reinvigorating shipbuilding in the region, including opportunities to leverage advanced manufacturing techniques like those developed by PNNL’s Smart Advanced Manufacturing program.

PNNL and Maritime Blue’s report arrives at a time of increasing emphasis on rebuilding American shipbuilding capacities. In 2025, the White House issued an executive order calling for the revitalization and restoration of domestic maritime industries, and in February 2026, the administration published a national Maritime Action Plan, calling for dramatic increases in shipbuilding capacity—including through the use of advanced manufacturing and upgrading electrical infrastructure.

Maritime heritage—and challenges—in the Pacific Northwest

With an abundance of deepwater ports, major U.S. Naval facilities, and a strong cluster of maritime activities, the Pacific Northwest has a strong maritime heritage that endures today. The sector accounts for more than 174,000 jobs and $45.9 billion in revenue in Washington state alone.

A pair of researchers from PNNL—David Hume and Ryan Calkins—interviewed shipbuilding experts at a number of privately owned Pacific Northwest shipyards and repair facilities to understand the challenges such businesses face in modernizing and accelerating their operations.

The researchers found that shipbuilding in the Pacific Northwest faced regional challenges stemming from the age of its fleet, with older vessels proving more demanding to repair and more difficult to modernize. Furthermore, the region faces many of the same challenges stymieing shipbuilding nationwide: for instance, labor shortages, rising operating costs, high energy use, and increasing complexity in vessel designs. Building on the industry interviews, the report provides a series of recommendations, such as standardizing design and building processes and increasing training programs for skilled workers.

Leveraging advanced manufacturing

Apart from its status as a maritime hub, the Pacific Northwest is also a hub of technological innovation. At PNNL, researchers in the Smart Advanced Manufacturing program have been improving manufacturing technologies such as friction stir welding and cold spray that could have significant benefits for ship manufacturing. For instance, PNNL is researching variants of friction stir welding that can join dissimilar materials of various thicknesses—a common task in shipbuilding—with less heat, distortion, and energy consumption than conventional welding, offering opportunities for improved products and lower costs.

The researchers found that many shipyards were interested in these advanced manufacturing technologies, but that decision-makers lacked insight into their availability and were hesitant to try new tech that hadn’t been proven at scale outside of a lab environment. To that end, the report recommends further partnerships and engagement between shipyards and the national laboratories developing relevant advanced manufacturing technologies.

Addressing energy challenges

Shipyards also tend to use a tremendous amount of energy, with one estimate suggesting that building a single large vessel could use as much electricity as 2,730 homes in a year. Adding to the challenge, this electricity is often needed in areas in which it is difficult to upgrade or develop new electrical infrastructure, such as waterfronts and dry docks.

In the report, PNNL and Maritime Blue identified promising opportunities to reduce or optimize energy use for shipyards, such as employing advanced manufacturing technologies that operate more efficiently and conducting advanced modeling of energy needs to select the most critical upgrades to energy infrastructure. These solutions would not only reduce costs, but would also help decision-makers avoid having to make major upgrades to electrical infrastructure or adding stress to the electricity system.

“Shipbuilding is essential to our nation’s economic and security interests, and electricity is fundamental to shipyard operations. As shipyards expand and adopt new technologies, failure to plan for future energy demand risks becoming a critical production bottleneck,” said Hume, a maritime advisor at PNNL and co-author of the study.