Ships as the consumers of maritime technology
These are exciting times for the shipping industry if one considers those who operate ships as the “consumers” of maritime technology.
There is both the incentive and the demand for change and improvement represented by the need for cleaner, more sustainable ship operation, and the undoubted pressure coming from the cost of fuel.
There is a “triangle of progress” that is completed by the ship owners, shipbuilders and regulators and as we have seen in the past, when political pressure, economic necessity and technological development get together, things start to happen!
We can see progress emerging in a generally more open and “questing” attitude among ship owners, with a substantial number of the more progressive companies encouraging, if not actually sponsoring, technical development in a way that we have not seen for a number of years.
We should be encouraged by the way in which quite radical thinking on such matters as new ship propulsion systems is being seriously contemplated and energetically researched. The “all-electric” ship, nuclear cassettes, fuel cells, and the emergence of an LNG fuel infrastructure are all products of this open minded attitude so evident in the industry.
Environmental pressure groups will claim this change as their own, but the truth is more complex, being rooted in the demand for greater efficiency and the knowledge that the march of progress tends generally to be incremental, and in shipping, intensely practical and pragmatic.
We can see this demonstrated in the development of the simple diesel engine that has been around for some 110 years, but still has much scope for improvement in its maritime context.
As the automotive industry has demonstrated, there is still great scope for practical improvement in diesel engine efficiency, to make the fuel go further, to produce more power in smaller packages and to minimise the still significant heat loss, along with the ability to reduce harmful emissions. And the fact that this is actually all “work in progress” ought to be very cheering.
People in the industry tend to become quite defensive when environmental pressure groups pontificate for the benefit of the media, when in reality, there is much that they should be proud of and which they should be energetically promoting.
There is the generally held belief that the industry is “conservative” and slow to move, when the very opposite is the case. The shape of the ship under water and above, the resistance of a hull through the water, the efficiency of propellers, are all being seen as offering scope for useful efficiency improvements.
There is a huge amount that is being done to make ships and ports more efficient in their operations together. There is little that stands still in the marine industry, even though so much of the progress fails to be given the publicity and public prominence that it deserves.
Perhaps this is really the key to why the industry is believed to be somewhat pedestrian and resistant to progress when there is every reason for the public to regard shipping as one of the most progressive means of transport. We just need to shout more loudly, communicate better and be rather less modest about our progress.
Source: BIMCO, Watchkeeper
