PortVision50 president and founding director Margaret Kaigh Doyle discusses how ports can support shipping’s decarbonisation, where LNG fits in, and why the industry needs to attract more women
Ports play a central role in shipping’s decarbonisation, underpinning reductions in GHG emissions by bunkering lower and zero-carbon fuels, electrifying equipment, adding shore power and optimising logistics.
“It all starts with ports and infrastructure” PortVision50 (PV50) president and founding director Margaret Kaigh Doyle told Marine Propulsion during a recent podcast interview. Back when she was working at Eagle LNG, Ms Doyle was part of a group negotiating to develop small-scale LNG in Southern California. While the project did not go forward, she recalls, “the lessons I learned trying to be a first mover with an alternative fuel stuck with me.”
In 2020, she set out to share those lessons by establishing PV50, a not-for-profit organisation aimed at helping North American ports and maritime stakeholders to better understand the technical, operational and regulatory hurdles of decarbonisation. Ports need to be “educating themselves and adjusting their master plans accordingly” to support shipping’s decarbonisation.
She noted billions of dollars in MARAD and Build Back Better funding in the US “is being spent on hydrogen hubs and other zero-carbon solutions” that “aren’t even up to scale.” Ms Doyle suggested a more practical approach would be to “take the steps to transition, and that could mean liquefied natural gas.”
“LNG is the smart transition”
Shipowners are placing orders for LNG-fuelled vessels at record levels, with some 298 in operation and another 511 on order as of mid-June, according to DNV Alternative Fuels Insight. “If you look at the order book, and you look at where the ships are going,” LNG is “the smart transition,” said Ms Doyle. “It’s not perfect, but it has to get us there.” She envisions LNG being replaced over the next decade by green, synthetic or bioLNG.
Maritime decarbonisation will need more than alternative fuels and new technologies; it will need an entire new generation of mariners. This will require attracting more women — who represent only about 1.2% of the global seafarer workforce — to maritime careers.
Among the early female graduates at the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at Kings Point, Ms Doyle recalled some of her own roadblocks, including those that were institutional. “In 1981, the place was basically run by a bunch of white men, who really didn’t have experience interacting with women in the industry,” she said.
However, saying her time at the sea “changed her life” for the positive, she regularly talks to young women about maritime careers and applying to the maritime academies. “But so many things need to change, starting at the academies,” she said.
In the last few months, many of the young women she speaks with about Kings Point bring up the subject of Midshipman-X — an anonymous current female USMMA cadet who alleges sexual assault while on Alliance Fairfax during her Sea Year deployment in 2019. A second female cadet, Midshipman-Y, alleges she suffered sexual harassment while onboard the same ship a year after Midshipman-X (who has since revealed herself to be USMMA senior Hope Hicks). Both women have filed civil suits against Maersk Lines Ltd over the alleged incidents.
“The fact that it’s 2022, and this has not stopped …that’s just wrong,” Ms Doyle said. “The industry has to say enough.”
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