Ardmore Shipping executive vice president and chief operating officer Mark Cameron explains why boardrooms across the industry must present a unified front in terms of environmental responsibility
Ardmore Shipping executive vice president and chief operating officer Mark Cameron explains why boardrooms across the industry must present a unified front in terms of environmental responsibility
Preparing for IMO 2020 is going to involve some challenges and it is not all about the question of dollar value; it’s a question of doing the right thing and doing it the right way.
When it comes to IMO 2020 compliance, we have to make sure we project the positive intent as an industry. The oil majors and OCIMF have an important role to play; they should be making it clear how, on a commercial level, they will deal with those vessels and operators that are non-compliant.
In this respect, we should learn from the past. Let’s not go down the road of prosecuting the people on the ships. Any fuel-related non-compliance that takes place post 2020 is unlikely to be the result of the individual actions of a chief engineer, or a captain making a rogue decision on their own.
This is not like MARPOL, in the sense that there will be rogue actions like pumping oily water over the side of the ship. It will be an owner or charterer’s decision and we need to support our staff and do the right thing.
“It is no good looking backwards and criticising IMO for 2020. We need to accept the situation, plan and prepare and implement compliance”
Shipmanagers have big role to play in this. They are prepared to make strong public statements saying that there are going to ensure compliance from the 1 January 2020.
But there is a large proportion of the world fleet operated under technical managers and we need to hear statements from the technical managers that, from 1 January 2020, the ships they manage will be compliant.
The maritime industry is great at planning and if we can do anything, we can plan and implement successfully, but we need leadership. It is no good looking backwards and criticising IMO for 2020. We need to accept the situation, plan, prepare and implement compliance.
That includes planning beyond IMO 2020. It will not, in my opinion, by a binary world of scrubber right or scrubber wrong. In the longer term there will be options to change. Of course, in the shorter term, if you have invested in scrubbers then you must justify that investment to shareholders. Likewise, if scrubbers do turn out to be the solution, then there will be time to revise the earlier decision not to fit scrubbers.
We have to stop thinking of fuel consumption in tonnes per day and think in litres of fuel per day. This change of mindset can make a big difference when you start looking at the amount of fuel consumed in other processes, such as tanker cleaning. This thinking overturns the traditional approach and brings in a more mindful way of thinking.
Finally, how did we end up with a 0.5% sulphur cap on marine fuel? Where did that number come from? Wouldn’t it have been a simpler process to adopt a 0.1% standard. It would have been a straight run distillate product, rather than the move toward a 0.5% hybrid. Will it not take more energy to produce a hybrid 0.5% sulphur fuel than a straight run 0.1% sulphur fuel, and will not more CO2 be produced in doing so?
If the ultimate debate is about CO2, then let’s have some joined-up legislative thinking. There are so many individual organisations in shipping that have representation at IMO. It does not make for a very efficient process. We need to have roundtable forums bringing all these organisations together and agreeing to present as a single unit.
By 2050 or even 2030 many of us in boardrooms today will no longer be closely involved in the industry. But it is our responsibility today, as leaders, to accept that the longer time scale on CO2 is probably the most important item on any boardroom agenda.
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