Will ships go back to carrying sails to reduce their carbon emissions?

The recent blockade of the Suez Canal, which highlights the fragility of global maritime trade, is an excellent opportunity to reflect on the issue of global shipping. Experts from the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change analyze the situation of the sector in this article:

While there has been much talk about the need for the aviation industry to make changes regarding carbon emissions, there has been less widespread coverage of the shipping industry.

However, the global shipping industry generates more than a billion tons of carbon emissions, nearly three percent of the global total, each year, an amount similar to that of aviation. And considering that ships carry more than 90% of the goods that are traded, and include everything from cargo ships and oil tankers to passenger ferries and fishing boats, it’s no big surprise that the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency that regulates shipping, forecasts that the shipping industry will produce up to 17% of global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

But despite the industry’s role in producing carbon emissions, progress in reducing those emissions has been slow. The International Maritime Organization has set a number of goals for the industry:

• reduced greenhouse gases by 50% below 2008 levels by 2050
• reduced carbon intensity of emissions by 40% by 2030 and by 70% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels
• However, these targets are not currently legally binding.
• Very slow progress
• From a technological point of view, there have been some advances: The Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) for new ships and the Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan (SEEMP) for existing vessels were agreed in 2011 and came into force on 1 January 2013.
• The first defines the energy efficiency of a transport “by calculating the proportion of CO2 emitted by the ship per ton-mile of work”. So if a ship with a deadweight of 20,000 tons travels two nautical miles, it has done 40,000 ton-miles of work.
• The second focuses on specific measures that each ship must take to improve energy efficiency (such as fuel efficiency and timely maintenance). According to John Maggs, senior policy adviser at the Seas At Risk Organization, which focuses on marine protection, progress in other areas of shipping emissions has been “painfully slow.”
•Almost nothing [se ha logrado] if you eliminate the reductions in emissions that occurred spontaneously and unregulated as a result of the 2008 economic collapse,” he explains.
“Almost all emission reductions since 2008 have been the result of market-driven ‘slow vaporization’, and the increase in ship sizes has also had an effect.”
• Slow browsing is necessary, but must be binding
• Reducing the speed of ships (“slow sailing”) by 20% would reduce both emissions and fuel costs by up to 34%. The practice became widespread after the economic crisis of 2008, when a drop in demand led to an oversupply of ships.
• However, due to the fact that slow vaporization is a market-driven phenomenon, it is not a perfect solution.
“The problem is that, for the time being, there’s nothing stopping those speeds from rising again as market conditions improve,” Maggs says. “It can be enforced quite easily through the satellite transponders that have been installed by all commercial ships and through port state control.”
• Of course, different types of ships pose different problems.

The most polluting, container ships

“At the vessel level, cruise ships are probably the worst, as they have a huge energy demand associated with their hotel services,” says Maggs.

“However, they are responsible for only a small part of the ships’ total emissions. The main sectors [problemáticos] are containers, bulk carriers and tanker trucks. Of these, they [barcos con el mayor impacto en el clima] are container ships as a result of their higher speeds.”

Alternative fuels

One obvious way to reduce emissions is for the industry to adopt alternative fuels. This is particularly important given the industry’s use of “bunker fuel,” essentially the slag from the refining process, which not only creates carbon emissions, but produces harmful gases and fine particles that can harm both human health and the environment.

Last year, the IMO began requiring that all fuels used on ships contain no more than 0.5% sulphur, thus lowering the previously existing limit of 3.5%. This is estimated to prevent 7.6 million cases of childhood asthma and 150,000 premature deaths worldwide each year.

While the UN agency cannot enforce the new rules, which depends on the countries in which the ship is registered, there are fines for trapped ships that violate the rules, which are theoretically issued by the ship’s ‘flag state’, the country where the ship was registered.

While several shipping companies are looking for alternative fuel sources such as hydrogen, ammonia and methanol, the current costs involved in producing “green” hydrogen are too high to compete with fossil fuels.

Wind energy and the use of candles

Wind is an obvious renewable energy that shipping companies could use, after all, it’s how all global shipping used to be powered, but only a small fraction of shipping is being driven by so-called sailing ships, where ships (whether sailboats, modernized powered ships, or new construction) are driven entirely by wind. Kite ships use a kite (along with an engine) to reduce emissions, while Japanese shipping company NYK is developing a ship that will use shovels, similar to a wind turbine, which according to the company will reduce carbon emissions by 69%.

For Maggs, the priority should be to reduce fuel consumption. “This can be done through more efficient ships moving at slower speeds using renewable technologies such as sails. This could drastically reduce emissions in the short term and help prepare the industry for the use of the scarcest and most expensive zero-carbon fuels of the future.”

Maggs is clear about what else needs to be done. “A short-term measure with real impact is needed,” he says.

“We proposed a direct regulation of speed. [La OMI] it’s moving toward a target-based system for each ship’s carbon intensity,” he adds before explaining that, if that measure is combined with the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming on Earth at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, then it could work.

“More practically, to meet broader climate and environmental goals, ships must reduce their fuel consumption to a minimum, through slower, more efficient ships using sails and other renewable technologies on board, and using the new zero-emission fuels for the remaining navigation.”

Given the importance of the shipping industry to global trade, something amply illustrated by the effect of Ever Given’s grounding on the Suez Canal, it is clear that sustainable and enforceable measures are needed quickly if the industry is to make real progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Source: UN News