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A change in climate and technology to transform shippingThe combined impact of climate change, the drive to minimise the effect of propulsion emissions and the transportation of ballast water between continents, and the growing need to find alternative technologies for the depleting resources of fossil fuel are set to dramatically change the face of global shipping in the decades to come.
Some of these changes are already happening, and not all are set to occur that far into the future.
A recent article claimed that within as little as 10 years, the tiny Canadian Arctic Port of Churchill could be transformed into a hub for world trade.
While most climatologists are increasingly concurring that the melting of the Arctic ice cap is speeding up, the possibility of a viable new Europe-to-Asia trade route via the northern arc is fast approaching the realm of reality.
Evidence of the fast-changing climate can also be found elsewhere. While 2006 was the second-warmest year in United Kingdom coastal waters since records began in 1870, seven of the 10 warmest years occurred in the last decade.
In July 2008, United States senator Ted Stevens, representing Alaska, told a congressional committee that “we need to explore ways to ease our dependence on fossil fuels in the transportation sector, but the investments required to make this transition are enormous.”
Mead Treadwell of the US Arctic Research Commission told the committee that new Arctic-capable ships are under construction in Southeast Asia and Europe. He also said that the prospect of hydrogen-powered ships, under development by Iceland, are raising wide interest.
On its website, the Norwegian-Swedish company Wallenius Wilhelmsen claims that “fossil fuel driven engines are yesterday’s technology and to reach a zero impact on the environment, we need ballast-free ships powered by sun, wind and waves.”
This ideal has moved beyond the realms of mere futuristic dreams. The company has already developed a concept vessel, the E/S Orcelle, which is powered by the sun, wind and waves. The ship has no conventional engines, uses no fossil fuels and releases no harmful emissions into the atmosphere or pollutants into the sea. She carries no ballast water and is intended to provide a vision of what an environmentally-friendly car and ro-ro (roll-on/roll-off) carrier may look like in 2015 – the target the company has set itself to have a commercial zero-emission vessel available.
Climate change also poses some serious implications for shipping safety because of projected higher risks of flooding and physical damage associated with increased sea levels and storminess.
The United Kingdom Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP), in its 2007/2008 annual report card, said a greater incidence of severe winds and larger mean wave heights in western and northern UK waters are being observed. The global average sea level has risen during the 20th century by between one and two millimetres per year. The latest published satellite measurements suggest the rise was around 3mm per year between 1993 and 2003.
While many scientists believe that sea levels may rise by one to two metres during this century, even a rise of half a metre will have severe impacts on ports, low-lying cities, fresh-water supplies, and other coastal infrastructure such as oil refineries and container terminals.
At the same time, there are increasingly low confidence levels associated with predicted future wind speeds and storm surges.
Shipping uses up-to-date forecasts for route selection and international certified load lines. The anticipated increased storminess will lead to reduced carrying capacity, route changes and slower speeds, restrictions on the operational envelopes (taking note of factors like the fact that aluminium fast-ferries are prone to fatigue damage from larger waves) and increased difficulties in manoeuvring in ports and restricted waterways.
Observations over the past 50 years have indicated a marked decline in the extent of Arctic sea ice. By 2080, it has been predicted that the navigation season for the Northern Sea Route (NSR) from Eurasia to the Bering Sea will increase from the current 20-30 days per year to 90-100 days, as was claimed in an article published in 2005. About half the Arctic summer ice has disappeared in the last 20 years.
Opening of shipping routes and extending the navigation season will significantly reduce transport distances and sailing times from Europe to Asia compared to the prevailing southerly routes, and will open access to natural resources in the Arctic Circle, the article stated.
These predictions have lately been brought forward considerably, with Professor Michael Byers of the School of Global Politics at the University of British Columbia recently noted that the melting of the ice cap is taking place “a good deal faster than anyone expected.”
”It is beyond our worst-case scenarios and quite terrifying in terms of its potential scope,” he said.
This warming trend has meant that the Hudson Bay is now navigable four months a year instead of three. Experts don’t claim to know just how fast it will happen, but the port of Churchill could open up six months, nine, even all-year-round, “while the 21st century is still young,” one article claims.
Even a seasonally ice-free Arctic, which seems fairly sure by 2020, would change the shipping industry dramatically. Vessels from Europe or Northeast Asia, now sailing centuries-old routes across the mid-Atlantic, would be able to follow the shorter northern arc, cutting the time at sea by as much as 40%.
A disappearance of sea ice south of Labrador would also eliminate Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaking requirements. This would mean savings of as much as $20 million per year.
There is, however, a downside to these developments. A recent study of the economic impact of climate change on Canadian commercial navigation on the Great Lakes, for example, found that predicted lowering of Great Lakes water levels would result in an estimated increase in shipping costs for Canadian commercial navigation of between 13% and 29% by the middle of this century.
Pressure on the shipping industry to become more green is also set to increase dramatically in the years immediately ahead, despite the fact that shipping is the most energy-efficient form of transport.
The results from a United Nations study, that was leaked to the media early last year, claimed that the true scale of climate change emissions from shipping, is almost three times higher than previously believed.
It calculates that the annual emission from the world’s merchant fleets has reached 1.12 billion tones of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas. The report suggests that shipping emissions – which are not presently taken into account by European targets for cutting global warming emissions, will become one of the largest single sources of man-made CO2 after cars, housing, agriculture and industry.
The magnitude of the implications of and the potential impact on the global economy of this finding is illustrated by the fact that in the order of 90% of global trade is transported by sea.
Despite the present slowdown in the world economy, world trade is expected to increase in the years to come.
While maritime emissions are presently not covered by the Kyoto accord, it is estimated by some experts that the global fleet of some 70 000 ships uses 200 million tones of fuel annually and could grow to 350 million tones by 2020.
As far back as early 2007, Don Gregory, director of environment at BP Marine, warned that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) would need to come up with an emissions strategy, “or it will be down to us. Aviation is in the firing line now, but shipping needs to take responsibility. There will be increasing pressure to do something.”
At the same time, the UK-based independent Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said that the problem needed to be addressed urgently.
“The proportion of emissions from international shipping continues to receive scant regard within government. Shipping has been missed off the climate change agenda.”
This situation, however, seems to be fast changing and shipping’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is receiving increasingly sharp attention. The UK’s MCCIP is set to launch a special report card on ecosystem connections in the European spring of this year.
The European Union has already implemented a Cap and Trade system, and the United States is expected to follow suit in the near future. These and other regulations will result in an increased cost for fossil fuels and operational costs.
Public concern about climate change continues to rise and it is anticipated that more customers will be seeking low-carbon products and services in response to regulation and their own concerns about the environment.
Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary-general of the IMO, in June last year said in an address to an international conference that it “is high time that we started to try and assess what the actual effects of climate change might be and how we will need to adapt to what seems likely to be a very different world from the one that mankind has known throughout its history.”
He also said that while no mandatory instrument has yet been adopted by the IMO to cover emissions of greenhouse gasses, it has given ample consideration to the matter. It has a mandate through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to pursue the limitation of reduction of these emissions from ships.
“We have established an action plan to that end and I am confident that we will be able to put in place a robust regime that will regulate shipping at the global level and achieve our aim of protecting the marine and atmospheric environment,” he said.
In January this year, representatives of 20 nations and the European Union, called on the air and maritime industries to act on global warming and address carbon emissions from a regulatory point of view by the end of 2009.
Transport ministers and envoys from these nations, including the Group of Eight (G8) major economies, met in Tokyo as part of a campaign to meet the goal of drafting a new climate change treaty by December this year. In a statement, they called on the IMO to deliver “a package of appropriate mechanisms for reducing emissions, preferably by the end of 2009.”
A conference in December in Copenhagen, Denmark is set to approve a new climate treaty for the period after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol runs out. It is highly unlikely that the aviation and maritime sectors will be left out again when new targets are set.
