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Shipping has long be one of the world’s 'invisible industries’ – but its carbon emissions are now bringing it under the glare of critical scrutiny. Huw Spanner asks whether this vast industry can start to steam towards a cleaner future.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine some of the green transport success stories that are around the corner. What comes to mind? A vast graceful airship? A solar-powered car? Some clever piece of videocon kit?
What you probably didn’t picture was a cargo ship the length of three football pitches, powered by liquid natural gas, currently being designed by Korean ship builder DSME as part of its Econology program. Or a huge container vessel, self-loading, smooth-sailing and powered by liquid natural gas, that’s been dreamt up by the Japanese shipping line NYK.
Carbon footprint
But these are just the kind of innovations that will be needed if shipping is to face up to its impact on the world’s climate. To be fair, ships are, relatively speaking, climate-friendly. Over the last 40 years, technological advances and economies of scale have cut fuel consumption dramatically – particularly when compared with other modes. Today’s articulated lorry pumps out about 50 grams of CO2 per kilometer for each tonne of goods carried. Airplanes account for at least 10 times as much. By comparison, a largish freighter may emit just 15 grams per tonne-kilometer (tkm); an oil tanker a mere five. Still, all those grams add up. Nearly 80 per cent of global trade by volume is transported by sea, with some 53,000 vessels clocking up over 50 trillion tkm a year. So immense is this weight of traffic that the industry’s emissions now total over a billion tonnes a year. That gives it a carbon footprint larger than Germany’s – and substantially larger than that of the aviation industry. One in every 30 tonnes of CO2 generated by human activity today comes from a ship. And the industry’s relentless growth looks set to continue as long as the global population keeps increasing and living standards around the world go on rising. By 2040, all other things being equal, the carbon footprint of shipping could easily double. Of course, all other things can’t remain equal.
Under scrutiny
One way or another, by 2040 we have to cut our emissions drastically, perhaps to below nine billion tonnes a year in total, if we are to have a chance of avoiding that critical 2°C rise in global temperature. Inevitably, shipping, for so long an 'invisible industry’ operating far beyond most people’s horizons, is now coming under intense scrutiny. Already, stringent new regulations to reduce onshore air pollution will require operators to cut their emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide (though, ironically, the latter has a short-term global cooling effect). It is only a matter of time before they are obliged to slash their carbon emissions as well.
Complete Story at:
http://www.greenwisebusiness.co.uk/news/sea-change-cutting-shippings-carbon-emissions-2054.aspx
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