The ports industry needs to voluntarily show it can give credible figures and tell a convincing story about its carbon footprint – if it can’t it might find that it’s forced to.<\/p>\n
UN targets aim to stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and reduce them by 60% by 2050, compared with 2010.<\/p>\n
Conor Feighan of Feport says that most of its members are taking a proactive position on carbon footprinting, but with trade growth and lengthening supply chains, carbon accruing to transport sector is still rising, not falling.<\/p>\n
So industry inactivity on reducing carbon might well lead to \u201ca top down approach from the legislator\u201d, he says. \u201cThe fundamental thing you have to ask is, do you want to be a leader or follower? Personally, I\u2019d want to create something I can live with rather than someone else deciding it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this, the apparently small contribution from terminals might have made certain operations think they could safely ignore the issue. Admittedly, for a box of Nike trainers delivered from Shanghai to, say, Southampton, \u201cthe carbon from the terminals will fall somewhere between 1% and 1.5%\u201d, says Charles Haine of WSP.<\/p>\n
But put it together and it adds up: \u201cOne terminal might have dozens of straddle carriers burning hundreds of gallons of diesel, 364 days a year, which means carbon is starting to look like very big business.\u201d So despite being invisible – unlike the plumes smoke associated with other air pollutants – it\u2019s beginning to attract a lot of attention.<\/p>\n
Mr Haine says he\u2019s seeing investors now insisting on very detailed carbon studies before signing off on finance for both operation and now construction projects. This has been largely ignored until recently which has been \u201ca missed trick\u201d, he says. Further, carbon policies are increasingly being written into concession contracts.<\/p>\n
Stakeholder demand<\/strong><\/p>\n According to Alan Tinline of Associated British Ports: “The biggest driver for a business at the moment is stakeholder interest.”<\/p>\n \u201cLogistics service providers are starting to need these carbon and emissions figures to show to their board and customers, and they are beginning to ask the terminals what their contribution is,\u201d adds Mr Feighan.<\/p>\n For example, as of May this year, Kuehne + Nagel is printing the total amount of CO2 emissions generated by each sea freight shipment on each invoice. The logistics operator says that this will \u201craise visibility and awareness of the environmental impact within the seafreight supply chain\u201d.<\/p>\n But for some ports and terminals, gaining the required level of clarity on their own operations could prove troublesome.<\/p>\n On a practical level, in older ports the electrical supply \u2013 usually Tier 2 carbon as it\u2019s purchased \u2013 can be on a single meter with an array of different users. \u201cAt the very least, this should be broken down into the main areas,\u201d says Mr Haine \u2013 lighting, handling, administration. Smart meters are the way to go, he says, \u201cotherwise you\u2019d have to do a bottom up inventory\u201d. ABP is doing just this.<\/p>\n While smart meters can be expensive and time-consuming to install, ultimately rolling them out might give the industry the real time data it needs.<\/p>\n Taking responsibility<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s also a fundamental problem with deciding where the terminal\u2019s responsibilities end.<\/p>\n Mr Feighan explains that chilled boxes highlight the issues: \u201cReefer consumption can be as much as 40% of the total carbon output of a terminal \u2013 but it usually hasn\u2019t any direct control over how efficient these are.\u201d So a year of plugging in older, less-than-green reefers can result in a problem for the carbon bottom line.<\/p>\n Given all this, there\u2019s a distinct temptation to ‘fudge’ the figures, bundle a lot of factors together and hope no-one notices. At the recent TOC Europe decarbonisation debate, Mr Haine said that of the terminals he\u2019d visited, \u201cless than half\u201d had convincing carbon reports in place.<\/p>\n Mr Feighan says the answer is to be more detailed rather than less, separating out each of the different areas including reefer consumption \u201cso spikes in demand can be explained\u201d. Without a basis for analysis, ports won\u2019t get very far when it comes to a worthwhile intervention. Mr Haine says he\u2019s seen operations invest in tackling elements which really don\u2019t make sense in terms of the bigger carbon picture.<\/p>\n Without the detail, a port or terminal also won’t be able to tell the story of their efforts, something Mr Haine is convinced will become more important as time goes on. \u201cI\u2019d say, don\u2019t paint a rosy picture; show how you tackled it, so when the lines come to you \u2013 and eventually they will – you can say here\u2019s the methodology, and here\u2019s the audited data.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds: \u201cI know it doesn\u2019t seem to be a priority \u2013 yet. But by the time you get caught out you are not going to have the lead time to get a data set that spans a couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s another good reason to begin right now with a warts-and-all inventory. Given the end of diesel sometime in the next decade \u201ca good, robust measurement while you are still polluting means that when you have to electrify, you\u2019ll be able to tell that story too\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n Don’t guess<\/b><\/p>\n Guesses are a risky business, especially as the figures are being subject to increasing scrutiny.<\/p>\n As Mr Tinline says: \u201cThe court of public opinion is a much tougher place to be then standing in front of a regulator… so understanding where your emissions come from is critical: you need to be able to answer the questions.”<\/p>\n Credibility is at stake, adds Mr Feighan: \u201cIn reality, you will want fundamental ownership of the information: otherwise you\u2019ll be putting data into circulation that you don\u2019t fully understand.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, regulation remains a looming spectre. Mr Tinline has direct experience of how difficult it can be: according to him the UK\u2019s old mandatory carbon scheme \u201cmanaged to be cumbersome, ineffective and very expensive\u201d.<\/p>\n Mr Feighan adds: \u201cThe worst-case scenario is that that legislators try to put in a \u2018one-size fits all\u2019 approach that doesn\u2019t understand the specific differences between, say, a container terminal and a bulk facility.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, there has been a move to try to bring everything under a weight regime in order to merge the different requirements, but this is still fraught with problems. \u201cFor example, do you weigh the box, or just the contents?\u201d he asks. If terminals align with the others in the logistics chain and do the latter, then what about moving the empties?<\/p>\n So the ports themselves have to demonstrate a reasoned and reasonable approach. The fight back, of course, has to be led by convincing figures.<\/p>\n HOW HARD IS CARBON COUNTING?<\/strong><\/p>\n Just how hard is it for a terminal to dig in and carry out credible carbon accounting?<\/p>\n ABP’s Alan Tinline makes the point that any tracking of emissions needs to cover extremely diverse assets, some of them having a large impact: \u201cIn one of our ports we\u2019ve got seven constantly moving tugs – they never stop,\u201d he says. And then there\u2019s the fluidity of the picture when it comes to bulk: \u201cFor example, we had a 38% reduction in coal throughput \u2013 but the way we handle the biomass taking its place, that\u2019s completely different, needing completely different pieces of kit.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Alan Lewis of GLEC points out that CO2 is actually much simpler to calculate than local NOx, SOx and particulates. The good thing about carbon is that it\u2019s directly proportional to the amount of fuel used, so, he says, the answer \u201cwill lie in your fuel bill\u201d.<\/p>\n And if you have the numbers it\u2019s not as tricky as you\u2019d think to find the carbon figure. “If you know your energy use, what you need to do with it is fairly trivial if you follow the guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.\u201d He adds: \u201cI\u2019d guess the problem is a lot of people don\u2019t feel confident. If you have the appropriate guidance, it\u2019s really not that difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n GLEC is willing to give businesses all along the supply chain that \u2018appropriate guidance\u2019 but Mr Lewis remains realistic: \u201cWhat we are trying to do is take people who might not understand or be doing very much about their carbon footprint, to a level that is, I\u2019d say, around two-thirds of the way to absolute best; you don\u2019t want to set the bar so high that people don\u2019t feel they can\u2019t reach it.\u201d<\/p>\n He points out the exercise yields practical benefits: as the relationship between carbon and energy consumption remains fairly consistent a terminal that engages in the process should reap enough in efficiency savings to make it all worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ports must not delay making carbon calculations, explains Stevie Knight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":5353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-5352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terminal-operations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5352","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=5352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5352"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=5352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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