SEEING THE BIGGER PICTURE

If we thought port privatisation was yesterday’s ‘big thing’ then arguably, LNG is today’s, as we report in this issue. And investment in natural gas projects will help the oil majors and governments around the world meet their greenhouse gas emission targets, we are told, since it’s a cleaner and more efficient fuel than oil or coal.

Quoting from a recent Shell report: “By 2050 the world will double its use of energy. Most growth will be in the developing countries as billions of people emerge from poverty. Despite greater efficiencies, demand from developed nations will continue unabated. The daunting challenge is to satisfy these rising energy needs without damaging health, blighting local environments and threatening vital natural systems.”

Maximilien Rouer, president-director of BeCitizen, points out that the rising demand for, and a massive reliance on, fossil fuels, which are not renewable, mean these resources will not last long. Of our energy sources, oil accounts for 34.9% of world output, gas for 21.1%, coal for 23.5% and nuclear for 6.8%. Other (renewable) energy sources – principally biomass which is mainly wood – accounts for the remaining 13.7%. Between now and 2020 our energy use has been projected to increase at the rate of 1.5% per year. Today, the world burns as much oil in six weeks as, in 1950, it burned in one year.

Of course, measures must be taken to ensure our level of energy consumption allows development in a sustainable way. The following table, taken from the International Energy Agency, is for the year 2000 and illustrates graphically the disparities between nations:

Country Emissions of carbon equivalent in kilograms per person per year<$>USA 6,718<$>Germany 3,292<$>France 2,545<$>Mexico 1,000<$>Mozambique 416

There is a school of thought that argues our wealth is founded on economic growth, whose indicators ignore the exhaustion of natural resources. Prices take no account of environmental or social costs.

For example the price of a pound of wheat does not include the cost the public pays to clean up the polluted water supply used to grow the crop. According to 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Amartya Sen, there is now an urgent need to reassess the basic workings of the market. How?

The time-honoured definition of sustainable development is that suggested by the World Commission on the Environment and Development. It is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” We cannot leave market forces in sole charge of managing our relationship with the environment, the argument goes.

So a sustainable society would see consumption based on provision of lasting services rather than the increasing obsolescence of goods. Trade would not be wasteful of energy. And research would be driven by social need rather than by market forces.

All this might sound a little Utopian – and far-removed from the daily business of running ports. It might even sound a bit alarming.

Reducing obsolescence? Wouldn’t that mean falling throughputs?

Our industry can draw comfort from one inescapable fact: water transport is both cheaper and environmentally more friendly than other transport modes – a fact the world is waking up to more now than ever. It’s encouraging too to see how equipment manufacturers and IT systems providers, develop cleaner, quieter and more economical machines and quicker, more efficient ways of moving boxes around yards. That isn’t an excuse for complacency however.

The greater challenge is to achieve better efficiencies and economies throughout the whole supply chain and ports, at the heart of that chain, interacting with the chain’s component parts and players, can do much to help although surely not without the stimulus of free market forces.

As to Shell’s comments about blighting local environments and threatening vital natural systems, again ports can, and must, lead by example; witness the fact that the Maasvlakte 2 expansion does not give Rotterdam carte blanche for port expansion. As a consequence of the European Bird and Habitat Directive, natural areas that are lost to industrial expansion must be compensated. In the case of Maasvlakte 2, that involves approximately 3,000 hectares of sea.

Taking into account a factor of ten – new nature needs time to develop – a proposal has been made to establish a 30,000-hectare marine nature reserve to the south of the Maasvlakte. And, in any event, 750 hectares of new nature reserves will be located to the south of the port.