Across the globe the ports and shipping industries need to work urgently hand-in-hand on the energy transition or risk a mismatch in efforts to meet the IMO decarbonisation and green house gas (GHG) emission deadlines, that was according to the panelists on the first day Keynote Panel.<\/p>\n
Aligning supply and demand of new fuels for growing numbers of dual-fuel use ships, training seafarers to manage and work with the new fuels and getting finance and government support to work through the transition to decarbonisation were some of the key challenges identified during the discussion.<\/p>\n
Funding gap<\/strong><\/p>\n Pranesh Kumar, general manager, and head of fleet, at Hafnia, posed an important question to the keynote panelists – whether governments were ready to come to the table. The question sparked mixed views on how far official support would be available, and one panelist commented that users would pay a major portion of the costs.<\/p>\n \u201cPassing along costs to customers will happen, but inflation and other risks for new technologies will require some government support,\u201d said Sanjay C Kuttan, chief strategy officer, at the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization.<\/p>\n But James Forsdyke, managing director, at Lloyd\u2019s Register Maritime Decarbonization Hub, pointed out that Governments can and should provide seed money to speed along maritime transition.<\/p>\n Seed financing and a push to get banks and insurers to look harder at financing options is already in progress in Singapore, said Er Tham Wai Wah, chief sustainability officer, Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA).<\/p>\n Moreover, the regulatory framework for the broad energy transition is happening in ways that could force governments to react as costs for customers and consumers increase.<\/p>\n More widely, companies are looking to spending smartly on sustainable greener technologies in operations such as electric tugs and equipment, said Evelyn Teng, head of contract pricing, at Maersk Southeast Asia Ocean.<\/p>\n Cooperation was widely seen as a way to smoothen some of the expected hiccups from switches to innovative technologies.<\/p>\n The view was bolstered by a call for shipping and terminal and port infrastructure to collaborate further to get these technologies in place.<\/p>\n Antonis Michail, technical director, at the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) said that for small operators in both industries worried about finance and making the right decisions on investments, a safe bet is to look at areas like electrification as part of the solution to decarbonise.<\/p>\n The size of the issue<\/strong> <\/p>\n Day two of the conference looked at how drives to reduce ship carbon emissions are increasingly being aided by digital tools and software in bids to both increase efficiency and look for other ways to save money.<\/p>\n While the focus on green fuels for a news class of ships and efficient operations at ports and terminals and the introduction of renewable power sources catches the big spending numbers, it is tweaks to existing operations that are the targets for companies with more niche solutions.<\/p>\n The second day of the Congress focused in on software for optimising ship travel and waiting times, including the Blue Visby Solution, a digital solution to pinpoint the best times to bring in or ship out a full-loaded vessel.<\/p>\n \u201cOptimising ships is a major issue for reducing carbon emissions from waiting vessels and the scale of the problem is \u2018staggering\u2019 – with the share of the fleet waiting hovering around 20%, said Haris Zografakis, partner, Stephenson Harwood LLP.<\/p>\n He noted that every port in the world requires coordination between customs, terminals, customers, pilots, port authorities – with many ports with unique ecosystems, causing many of the waiting bottlenecks globally.<\/p>\n His tool to manage these bottlenecks, the Blue Visby Solution, is premised on coordinating ships to anchorage to reduce carbon emissions – the system of ships steaming for the same port. This would leave last-mile berthing in the hands of the ports and terminals delivering fuel savings and cutting carbon.<\/p>\n But Mr Zografakis added that owners need skin in the game to see benefits such as fuel savings – this requires bilateral contracts and multilateral agreements.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the environment, ship optimisation coordination could bring a 15% to 20% GHG (greenhouse gas) reduction, 15% carbon budget reduction and fewer whale strikes,\u201d Mr Zografakis said, adding the first prototype completed this year using real ships and real contracts in Australia and Japan.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a study of data available on draft levels at ports has prompted a look for a digital tool to allow increased loading capacity via software to measure vessel draft that can also lower carbon emissions, said Brendan Curtis, chief commercial officer, OMC International.<\/p>\n \u201cFewer voyages by optimising loading capacity are possible at most ports worldwide,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n These software tweaks to operations are increasingly becoming a new way for maritime industry players to think about other ways to reduce carbon emissions.<\/p>\n A mammoth task<\/strong><\/p>\n The good news on the pace of maritime decarbonisation has to be sobered by the scale of the transition needed to bring new fuels and technologies into wide use globally, panelists told the Green Ports & Shipping Congress on 9 May.<\/p>\n This cautionary note came after two days of calls for coordination, sharing and common purpose \u2013 which is somewhat hampered by the trillions of dollars of investment still needed along with the urgency to introduce new ships and technologies.<\/p>\n \u201cOur prediction is by 2035 not even half of the new vessels will be powered by new fuels,\u201d said Peter Bos, who leads professional maritime solutions for renewable energies at Royal HaskoningDHV.<\/p>\n Mr Bos added that there is a lot of positive news on alternative fuels, but we need to move from MoUs (Memorandums of Understanding) to actual deals and plans.<\/p>\n He described \u2018chicken and egg\u2019 obstacles to new shipping fuels such as a lack of experience in regulation, training for workers and making a good business case among factors that make it hard to move quickly.<\/p>\n That brought up a two-speed response in the industry with some first movers out of the gates, but other companies watching from the sidelines and feeling some heat to act.<\/p>\n \u201cMany companies in shipping and maritime are now being \u2018pushed\u2019 on meeting decarbonisation goals after the first movers,\u201d said Taylor Wamberg, regional maritime commercial markets manager at Lloyd\u2019s Register.<\/p>\n He added that there is a need to create a demand signal for new fuels, looking at number of ships and tracking them. But still, the number of players involved in the transition is a challenge.<\/p>\n \u201cThe complex set of stakeholders makes coordination on maritime transition difficult,\u201d said Archana Kannan, senior manager, Green Shipping Corridors at C40 Cities and Strategy Consultant at Advisory, ARUP.<\/p>\n She also warned to be mindful of anti-competition laws when considering data and intellectual property sharing.<\/p>\n One easier win for the maritime industry could be showing the benefits of the energy transition in more concrete ways.<\/p>\n \u201cImprovements at port facilities the lead to better public health which can gather local support for bigger changes,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The urgent need for cooperation and more finance were two key takeaways from the Green Ports Shipping and Congress held at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from 8 to 9 May 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1376,8],"tags":[854,670,845,1652],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greenport-exclusive","category-projects-initiatives-greenport","tag-business","tag-energy-transition","tag-finance","tag-green-ports-shipping-and-congress"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4411,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions\/4411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4409"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}