The focus on shipping at COP26 was very much international, with deepsea getting a lot of attention, but as the UK government worked through the details with the industry, it realised that shortsea has the largest possibility to lead the way, thanks to multiple bunkering opportunities and shorter distances, said Ross. \u201cWhat may work for deepsea won\u2019t work for shortsea, and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the UK, there has been a lot of funding for R&D around Green Corridor proposals but the money available for actual projects is very small, she said. \u201cWe need to move from the R&D phase to the scaling-up phase, through collaboration and building business cases and through that you will remove all the barriers for shipping companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the UK Chamber\u2019s \u2018key ask\u2019 was that anyone creating a Green Corridor maintains a fuel and technology neutral approach.<\/p>\n
The panel discussion on \u201cGreen Corridors \u2013 collaboration to drive sustainable growth\u201d was moderated by Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association.<\/p>\n
Jesper Christensen, Operations Director at DFDS, outlined the plans for a Green Corridor linking the Dover with Calais and Dunkirk. While an electric vessel can be built in a couple of years if the plan and design is ready, one of the key difficulties, he noted, is electrification of the ports. \u201cWe need a lot of electricity to run the vessels, and especially on the UK side it is not geared up for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christensen explained DFDS\u2019s ambition to reduce CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030, and to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. He admitted this was \u2018quite a daunting challenge\u2019 but told delegates: \u201cThere is a demand from our customers for decarbonisation because most of them also have to look at their CO2 footprint \u2013 so they will come to us and ask how are we dealing with that part of their supply chains.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Port of Bilbao is taking the risk and helping customers and logistics to decarbonise, said Andima Ormaetxe, Bilbao\u2019s Director for Operations, Commercial, Logistics and Strategy. Bilbao is leading the way on a Green Corridors project for the Atlantic Corridor, aiming to attract increasing volumes between Spain and the North of Europe \u2013 not only logistics volumes but also energy volumes based on Bilbao\u2019s Strategic Energy Hub, evolving from fossil fuels to renewable sources, including the creation and supply of green hydrogen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are taking the risk, investing in these processes and inviting shipping lines and shippers to start this trip of decarbonisation,\u201d said Ormaetxe. \u201cSo we are really putting the egg before the chicken. If we just put pressure on the rest of the community, we are not going to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Nils Minor, Head of Key Account Management at P&O Ferrymasters, emphasised: \u201cOf course green solutions also have to be competitive, otherwise shippers will likely choose something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThere are increasingly ship owners willing to invest but when it comes to such large investments as a vessel and significant cost increase, you have to find a balance between what is feasible and what is not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is important that early movers to green shipping are incentivised \u2013 and Green Corridors are part of that, said Katrina Ross, Policy Director at the UK Chamber of Shipping.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,7],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-news-coastlink"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}