Under pressure

Ports on the US West Coast are ahead of the game in ‘greening’ their operations – pressing ahead with Clean Truck programmes, cold ironing and a host of other initiatives.

It’s no coincidence that the prevailing wind is west to east. “If you have ports right on the West Coast, whatever emissions there are from those ports are going to go into the community and affect the population, says environmental expert Carleen Lyden-Kluss. “The game changers in environmental issues in the US are Los Angeles/Long Beach and Seattle.

New York is slightly different – you don’t have emissions blowing directly on to the populations on the East Coast, but you are in a very environmentally aware area, and there is certainly interest. So New York/New Jersey is another of the game changers.”

Ms Lyden-Kluss, co-founder and executive director of the North American Marine Protection Association, says that in every community there is a desire to ‘do the right thing’ – and the right thing is to be as environmentally efficient as possible. But there are limits. “Take the air industry as an example; if it got to zero emissions, and invented all of the technology for that, we wouldn’t be able to afford to fly anyway.”

Similarly with ports – doing the environmental best thing is great for the community, but that same community has commercial expectations, relying on the port’s success for a high level of employment. “It is finding that balance between good environmental stewardship and commerce and I think all ports are searching for that,” says Ms Lyden-Kluss.

While community pressure is one aspect, straightforward regulation is another that drives ports forward in their green aspirations.

The comment is often made that ports have little or no control over what happens before or after perimeter gate – but Ms Lyden-Kluss predicts that environmental regulation will indeed become broader and stretch further along the supply chain.

“In the US we have the National Emissions Standards; and that bar will be raised higher and higher, and will be applied to trucks as well. It may not get to the pristine nature of Clean Truck but it will result in fewer emissions across the board.”

The proliferation of ECAs (Emission Control Areas), will force lower emissions from ships, putting ports at the centre of a ‘greener’ intermodal network.

There are obvious carrots, or sticks, such as carbon credits or levies, influencing the ‘greenness’ of ports. And clearly ports would want to reduce fuel consumption as prices rise inexorably.

However, the cost of low-sulphur fuel will be much greater than traditional fuel and the production of low-sulphur fuel actually requires more energy, Ms Lyden-Kluss says. “Something that is being lost in a lot of conversations is what the net environmental benefit actually is.”

She highlights recent analysis which showed it required 1.8 gallons of petroleum to produce 1 gallon of ethanol in the US: “There is a disconnect here. It is so important to evaluate the environmental aspects properly. If you just move the problem up the chain, there is no benefit.”

Cold ironing in Seattle is an example of a great tool because it is based on hydropower, she points out. But if cold ironing facilities are powered from an inefficient coal-fired plant, with half the power being lost on the way to the port, that is hardly a ‘green’ solution. The visibility of ports makes them an easy target for environmental regulation, says Bruce Lambert, executive director of the Institute for Trade and Transportation Studies in New Orleans.

“For a lot of reasons, ports are the kind of nail that sticks up furthest in transportation. They are very defined geographically. People are looking for waterfront developments overlooking river or beach, so waterfront land is very valuable. There are prime properties for developments. People like to go to the water and look at it.”

But ports generate a lot of activity, attract queues of trucks, and often present the added attraction of smokestacks from ships. “For example, if you said you were going to clean up all the trucks in Felixstowe or Rotterdam, where would be the easiest place to start? The port, of course. There are distribution centres and other terminals elsewhere but why mess with all these things when the port is such an easy target? It’s a hub.”

Mr Lambert agrees that LA/LB have been leaders in the environmental drive in the US. So far, he says, most of their ‘greening’ has been targeting local activities, ie ships’ and trucks’ emissions.

“When most people talk about a green port, it is mostly in terms of air emissions – there is a lot of talk about tackling truck emissions by reducing queues or insisting on cleaner diesel engines. But there are other issues: contaminated dredging disposal, the types of antifouling paint used on hulls.”

Some would take things much further, to imposing carbon footprint regulations on imported goods, for example. But Mr Lambert says that raises all sorts of issues. “Think of the Icelandic ash cloud; the people it hurt most were the Kenyan bean farmers and the flower growers of Africa. It is a moral dilemma when you try to push environmental issues without recognising the trade-offs. I might feel good about it but I am imposing my good feelings on the small rural farmer in Kenya.”

Beyond that, there is the big question; how much do the public really want to pay for all this? “In general, the public in the developed world is not going to pay £4 more for a ‘greener’ tennis shoe. A lot of consumers talk about wanting to reward green logistics. But if they go to a store and find the bag of organic apples is £1 more, they take the others and wash them when they get home.”

And this is the irony, he says: “The ports industry is responding, as it should be. But the reward is not there. In many ways, how ‘green’ a port is going to be is tied to how activist the local community is about the port.”

And that raises the frightening spectre of rapid development in the emerging markets, particularly China and India – where, as Mr Lambert says, the priority for most is feeding their family from one day to the next, not worrying about how virtuous anything is in green terms. “The West can afford to step back and have much more sustainability – while they are more in the development phase.

Carleen Lyden-Kluss says that without some form of environmental guidance, then the impact on the global environment of China and India’s accelerated growth is going to be huge. “We need to find a way that developing countries can continue their growth pattern but not with such a severe impact on emissions – although having said that, developed countries don’t exactly have a sterling record here.

“It is only in the past 20-25 years that we have started to look at and do something about emissions. What we do have is the opportunity to implement those developed technologies in these developing countries. Global port operators can take their knowledge into concessions.”