For maritime decarbonisation to succeed, look beyond maritime

For maritime decarbonisation to succeed, you cannot just look at the ship and the port, according to Blue Sky Maritime Coalition president and chief executive, David Cummins. “You have to look at everyone that impacts or is impacted by maritime to get it right,” said Mr Cummins.

This involves “systems thinking,” he said. “Maritime cannot just keep working the way it’s always worked and use a different fuel and get anywhere near net zero — it just will not work. You must completely rethink the efficiency of the entire system.”

Speaking at Marine Propulsion’s Maritime Decarbonization Conference, Americas, Houston in early December, Mr Cummins said when Blue Sky Maritime Coalition was formed almost four years ago, the non-profit organisation “wanted to bring collaboration and pragmatic decision making, where it’s not an either or. You must improve your environmental stewardship, but also make sure you’re economically better off than today at the same time. It’s not one or the other.”

Launched by 22 chief executives from shipowners and operators, port authorities and class societies, Blue Sky Maritime Coalition has grown to 108 members representing the entire maritime value chain — fuel providers, OEMS, shipyards, banks and lending institutions, academia and law firms — in North America.

“No one was looking at inland river-type vessels or short haul routes. Everyone was looking at container ships, railroads and oceangoing ships,” he said. Inland, coastal and oceangoing vessels present unique challenges to eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

“We have to change the way the system works”

Mr Cummins pointed out that about 80% of the planet is impacted by maritime activities. “You have to look at each of these stakeholders differently and figure out, what does their life look like when you’re successful at this in 2050?”

Lowering GHG emissions starts with wringing out the inefficiencies in the system and the industry needs to focus on the priorities that could make its net-zero future possible.

Autonomous vessels will be part of that future, said Mr Cummins, although this does not necessarily mean unmanned vessels. He cites the commercial airline business, which is underpinned by autonomy but still has crew in the cockpit in case of emergencies, and air traffic control tracking every plane.

“If we think about how ship voyage management is planned, it’s very, very inefficient. What you want is to have every vessel working off an algorithm, telling it where to move and at what speed to make sure the entirety of the planet is using as little fuel as possible,” he said. Additionally, vessels need to ensure that they are all operating at maximum cargo capacity to increase efficiency. An example would be a tug that is pushing 15 barges but is only towing 12. “How do you make sure they could stop and pick up a barge that needs to be moved?” He said this could be handled via a code-sharing concept, like commercial airlines.

In the case of a large container ship that comes into port and “makes other people wait because it has its contract [so] it doesn’t have to wait. It is causing more emissions for that port,” said Mr Cummins.

“We have to change the way the system works,” he concluded.