Sustainability It is all a question of balance
The drive towards a low-carbon industry must continue, because economic growth is only going to increase demand for energy
If you were thinking clean and green, the city of Vancouver would probably rack up high on your agenda. Last week in Burrard Inlet, the air was like crystal, the sun shone and the snow on the high peaks glistened.
After raining cats and dogs for months it dried up nicely for BIMCO’s general meeting, which is what had brought a good selection of the shipping world to the British Columbian city.
Sustainability had been the watchword of retiring BIMCO president Robert Lorenz-Meyer during his two year tour of duty, and it was to be the theme of the conference, which preceded the general meeting itself.
The latter was a largely procedural affair, at which the Indian shipowner Yudhishthir Khatau was elected as the new president of the organisation, at 43 the youngest in BIMCO’s 106-year history, and the first from India.
This was a meeting that encouraged people to look at the “big picture”, rather than the narrow confines of business, and to consider the elements of sustainability, which could be boiled down to the number of people in the world, their effects on the climate and their growing demands for energy, along with the technical developments that can perhaps help us to balance these needs.
David Foot an economist and demographics expert, urged us to think of people as the essential element, as both customer and employee of our industry.
I supposed we are inclined to believe people when they tell us that with a world population that has grown from 3.5bn to 5.5bn in the past 40 years, we are going to hell in a handcart.
Dr Foot, however, was far from being a Malthusian doomster, and drilled down into the particulars of demographics around the world, noting the balance of populations and the consequences of specific changes that point to obvious consequences as he married national life cycles with their population profile.
If you think of the number of people in any country as the drivers of growth or creators of wealth, it would seem prudent to remain aware of these changes.
The ageing populations of Japan, Russia, China, the US and Europe might suggest these could become the powers of the past, while the more fertile demographics of nations such as India and Brazil indicate a more dynamic future.
But it is more complex than this, as young, growing populations need something to do with their energies, poverty challenges their governments and peace and stability are clearly at risk if there are huge numbers of unemployed poor.
You can think about population in so many different ways. This might be thought quite a spur to shipping if you believe world trade is the vehicle for feeding all these mouths, and keeping them from freezing in the dark. You might think about the life cycle of needs that shipping can help fulfil and then, if you are in a country where the average age is soaring, you might wonder from where the economic growth is going to emerge.
The chairman of the Carbon War Room, a body that has so far rather aggravated the shipping industry, was clearly out to build bridges. Jose Maria Figueres is an accomplished diplomat, and tried to soothe concerned shipowners worried about being beaten up by climate change activists with his assertion that climate change could offer good business opportunities.
He suggested the private sector had a key role in creating a low-carbon economy, and although short-term thinking still predominated in government circles, a great deal of carbon could be eliminated with current technology.
To the sceptics in the audience, he suggested we couldn’t take the risk of irretrievably damaging the planet, should the scientific consensus on global temperature changes be correct.
Mr Figueres is the soul of reasonableness, but his message is clear: that we can, and must, reduce carbon by the gigatonne measure, and fiddling around the edges or waiting for indecisive governments isn’t on.
To people whose brows crease over soaring bunker bills, the message of the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, was not one calculated to cheer: major uncertainties with the Arab world and North Africa in ferment; oil price volatility; some dire possibilities if we are too frightened by the Japanese nuclear situation to reinvest in more nuclear plants, and fewer eggs in the basket of varied energy sources we need to keep the world growing.
This was a gloomy forecast , and one that seems to promise higher prices for every sort of fuel.
This led smoothly into some of the technical solutions to these challenges for shipping, which were offered by Hermann Klein of Germanischer Lloyd.
Illustrating the case of a 12,000 teu containership that could drink some $1bn worth of fuel during its life, Dr Klein suggested there was huge potential for fuel saving, if we were going to be spending more than 10 times the capital cost of a ship in what we were putting in its bunker tanks.
While there was much we could do with newbuilding designs to hugely increase efficiencies, he also said some intelligent investment could make a substantial difference to the efficiency of existing vessels. Plenty of “low-hanging fruit” were available in hull and engine design, before we started to look at more radical solutions.
We should, he said, concentrate on areas of maximum gain, but must also bear in mind that while we are developing greener ships, there will be many more of them.
This was a meeting to make people think. As the incoming president told the younger members of BIMCO 39: “Shipping is a necessity – we depend on it. But we cannot separate growth from environmental responsibility.” There’s the rub.
Michael Grey
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This article appeared in Lloyd’s List on 13 June 2011.For more information visit www.lloydslist.com
