From Venice to Hamburg

Green in February in Venice? That’s not easy to find in the beautiful, densely built lagoon city. However during the GreenPort Conference held at the cruise terminal, many interesting green themes could be listened to.

The more than 200 visitors from ports, shipping companies and the service providers of the very diverse maritime sector were offered an extensive information platform around the themes of “Energy for Green Ports” and “GreenPort Logistics”. The effort to find sustainable solutions was clearly discernible. After many years of searching for causes, of problem discussions, theoretical debates and looking for realisable solution approaches it seems that reports on the progress of promising solutions and their successful implementation are gaining weight. From climate change to terminal operation, one thing is sure: lessons have been learnt! Yet there is always room for new ideas and improvements.

Intelligent solutions

Venice, the venue of the Congress and a port called by many tourist ships, was also a perfect example to demonstrate intelligent solutions on how to quench or reduce ports’ and in particular cruise shipping’s ravenous for energy and lower emissions. Such, almost any kind of renewable energy production can be found in ports today - from conventional power plants via wood pellets and wind power, biogas production and photovoltaics all the way to bioreactors filled with algae. Which technology is ultimately selected, is determined by regional boundary conditions and particularities but , however, also by the still limited knowledge of the parties involved.

The intensive exchange of knowledge at conferences will certainly be very useful not only in this aspect but when it comes to developing intelligent solutions to reduce energy requirements and emissions, too. Detailed analyses of energy requirements based on quantity, time and place of use may appear rather simple at first glance, however, they may inspire in reducing total consumption and peak demands, especially when dealing with complex structures such as ports, large terminals or ships, and thus helping to improve the protection of our climate and the environment and to save funds. Ports and enterprises are both looking for solutions and they undertake their action in a creative and promising way.

Costly to install

During the conference, presentations about the supply of shore power to ships at berths made clear that environmental protection is also complex and does not always come cheap. Even if there is no lack of available mature manufacturer solutions and practical examples, this alternative solution which reduces ships’ emissions in the port and which is very costly to install, is not deployed on a broad basis and in most cases it is restricted to berths located in particularly sensitive areas and for special types of ships with high berth frequency. Both indicators apply to many berths of port service ships and cruise ships so that in Venice, apart from the already existing solutions, a lot of discussions revolved around new shore power projects for cruise ships.

The GreenPort Congress in Hamburg in September is likely to focus on other solutions. In North Europe, the ECA/SECA rules and regulations dominate debates. It will be difficult to observe the ECA restrictions applicable in these areas in the future with the low-sulphur shipping fuels that are currently used. One possible alternative is to use liquefied natural gas (LNG). First experiences with LNG as a shipping fuel have been positive and the low price sparks many interesting ideas, not least because in the foreseeable future more ECAs, e.g. around North America, will be added. It is still not certain whether LNG will be more of a niche product like the towing kites (SkySail) or sailing cargo vessels at the moment or if the increasing number of proponents of this new fuel will be proven accurate. As climate and environmentally friendly as LNG may be, the question is if all existing operational and financial obstacles can be overcome. Anyhow, ships running on this fuel would score a lot of points on the Environmental Ship Index - an assessment scheme introduced by the WPCI, and benefit from financial incentives in the form of reduced port fees offered by ports taking part in this project. This promising project, which has just started in several North European ports, will also be an issue in September in Hamburg.

Climate and environment

It is not only ships that have high energy demands and thus an impact on our climate and the environment. Terminal operations at the ports and transport chains in the hinterland will, of course, also be included in the analyses on carbon footprint. Today, being conscious of climate, environmental and financial issues is also being able to choose from a wide variety of calculation methods available. Shippers, freight forwarders, equipment manufacturers, terminal operators, ports and research institutions are all looking for optimisation options and the variety of examples presented in Venice was wide, ranging from optimising the CO2 emissions of a product’s transport chain across Europe and the carbon footprint of all activities at the port of Antwerp all the way to comparing the CO2 quantities emitted when transporting a container from the Far East to different locations in Europe via Mediterranean and North range ports. These presentations, based on climate-friendly approaches, were supplemented by concrete operational examples on climate and environment protection by members of the transport chain, such as e.g. terminal operators or the developers of logistics property. They will also be taken into account in the planning of the new deepwater terminal envisaged for Venice. The transport of containers to recipients in the closer-lying hinterland is to be exclusively performed - typically Venetian - by climate and environmentally friendly barges. A worldwide unique modal split, where otherwise talk usually revolves around changes in the small percentage range in favour of rail transports or inland shipping.

Once more, issues dealing with energy and climate protection could be found at the top of a GreenPort conference’s agenda. The Hamburg congress will most likely put a stronger emphasis on the experiences gained with the port environmental review system PERS, specially developed and updated for ports by ECOPORTS and ESPO, the practical side of many environmental protection measures and the nature conservation issues many port activities need to take account of. They all strongly mark day-to-day operations at a port, terminal or onboard a ship and here, at least as many data need to be collected, assessed and analysed and measures to be developed as is the case in climate protection. The reputation of the parties involved in a transport chain, and in particular the reputation of ports is often measured by emissions and nature conservation efforts affecting their neighbours. Both issues should therefore not be lost sight of in even the hottest climate debates.

Need to be protected

Anyone in the transport chain understands the fact that our climate and our environment need to be protected. Interesting solutions are being developed everywhere. We should now accelerate the exchange of experiences and take a consolidating “best-practice phase” break which enables us to achieve favourable results in Europe and in the other parts of the world.

Wolfgang Becker, Head of the Environment Strategy Division of the Hamburg Port Authority