Our special column asked from the winners of the first GREEN4SEA – EUROPORT Awards, which were announced in early November on the sidelines of EUROPORT, to assess the environmental status of the shipping industry and suggest ways to move forward and change the path toward a more sustainable future.
In your view, has the industry been successful in enhancing its environmental performance? What should be the next steps?
Teus van Beek, General Manager Idea and Innovation management, Wärtsilä
What we see in the industry today is that the things we do are driven by cost. Even we want to introduce new green solutions, we are measured by the fact of how much fossil fuel we will reduce, that’s the payback. That business model on the lone term, we need to find a much more effective way where we will find a balance and good behavior is being incentivized and rewarded by people who invest more in green solutions but also find that back in their balance sheet in a positive manner. We have not yet found such a model but we support any initiative that will drive this forward. And this is what we need as a global industry perspective.
Sofie Hebeltoft – Director, Head of CSR, DFDS
New business models are needed. We also need to figure out how to take the risk out and ensure that it is beneficial to everyone to invest and take a chance without much risk; this should be a collaborative approach. Also, we need to find a balance between being disrupted from new technology and new upcoming companies and embracing it; we need news ideas and something to learn from. Hopefully together we can develop something greener.
Stein Kjølberg, Global Concept Director – Hull Performance Solutions, Jotun
As a starting point, the reputation that shipping industry is conservative starts changing now since more initiatives are moving forward. But I am afraid that for many 2020 will be still a route to uphold. Is anyone able to say what would be the price of the fuel from January 1st? No one is able to say that for sure. There is a lot more to be done to move forward; digitalization, openness and transparency are key things. And we all can learn by our own business. The ideal scenario would be to take the entire trade, breaking it down to small parts and then measure all these parts; hence we can identify where the problems are and what we can do to improve them.
Sotiris Raptis – Senior Policy Advisor for Environment and Safety, EcoPorts Coordinator
Talking about future business models and transparency; to us is increasingly important to improve transparency. This is what we are trying to do through EcoPorts and the publication of our environmental report. To further make our sector transparent and accountable, local communities and all stakeholders can consult our environmental report to find out how better or worse perform every year; it is about an open and transparent dialogue with our stakeholders. Again, ports are mission driven and reflect the concerns of the local communities. The top priorities, air quality and climate change, show the need for infrastructure, but we also need to see which measures will be rolled out in the next years for such infrastructure and future demand.
Above views were presented during a panel discussion at the award ceremony of first GREEN4SEA – EUROPORT Awards, 6 November, Rotterdam.
The views presented hereabove are only those of the authors and not necessarily those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
