Can green ships be a reality? Is there enough being done to address the carbon emissions within the maritime industry? What is the latest in the field of sustainable ports? These topics were intensely discussed by industry experts and stakeholders during one of the panel discussions at The Week’s Maritime Conclave 2024 held at ITC Grand Chola in Chennai.
One of the speakers was Sushil Singh, Chairman, Deendayal Port Authority, Kandla and he relied on figures and statistics to explain the practical challenges that await the industry as well as the country if it resolutes to reducing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.
There are 38,000 vessels in international trade burning 200 million tonnes of conventional fossil fuel annually emitting one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, he said and added that by 2050, the GHG emissions will increase along with the maritime trade raising “serious concerns.” However, he suggested that if net zero GHG emissions have to be achieved as per the strategy and roadmap outlined by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), action has to be taken immediately. He pitched for short, medium and long-term measures tackle the issue.
“On the short term side, energy-efficient measures need to be adopted like slow steaming, frequent cleaning of propellers, fiction management, optimization of weather routing and usage of energy-efficient technologies on board. So these measures need to be adopted on shipping lines on an immediate basis, but then these have their own limitations in terms of the potential that they offer for total reduction of GHG,” he said.
He pointed out that in the current times, the availability of alternate fuels like methanol, green ammonia, green hydrogen, and its derivatives would be challenging and also expensive given that alternate fuel costs at least 2.5 to 3 times more than fossil fuel. He said that to produce these variants of fuel on a large scale sufficient for the maritime sector to achieve net zero, the production infrastructure has to be upgraded which would require significant investments.
“Scaling up of availability of fuel and improving the affordability of the fuel by reducing the price gap between the fossil fuel and alternative fuel—these are the two factors that will decide how far, how fast and how quickly we can transition from fossil fuel-based transportation system to an alternative, low carbon transportation ecosystem. So India will also have to overcome these two points —affordability and availability.”
Dr. S Nallayarasu, Head, ocean Engineering Department, IIT Madras was asked about infrastructure development exercises in ports that would ensure sustainability in the long run. He took a critical view and said that capacities are being added without addressing the need to upgrade or replace existing infrastructure.
“If you go around east and west coast, at least major ports, most of the major ports have already saturated. Most of them have no physical space to develop. I visited almost all the ports, the infrastructure in terms of physical structures, mechanical equipments and the evacuation systems, Is as old as more than 30 years,” he said, “Normally, we forget that the infrastructure is ageing and we keep adding the capacity but not infrastructure enhancement thinking that the system life is infinite.” He said in such scenarios there are chances of the system failing if its stretched beyond its limit.
In terms of solutions for long-term infrastructure modernisation, Nallayarasu suggested a new approach by adopting unique Master plan and a corpus fund.
He felt that a master plan for ports should reflect on previous master plans to understand what went wrong and what needs reformed instead of going for a completely new master plan. He proposed a corpus fund for ports that would take care of infrastructure enhancements or new additions for the next 50 years including building new structures, if need be. He also said that well-trained manpower and integrating technological solutions operations will also help in smooth and ideal functioning of sustainable ports.
Naveen Prakash, SICCI SCM’s Chair and Director, Global Logistics spoke on how his company was supporting MSME’s by giving customers options to ship low-weight cargo at competitive prices. Regarding their contribution to sustainability, he said that his company was ensuring that through technology, they have weeded out the need for customers to travel physically due to the ease of online services.
Moderator Lekha Ravi, Assistant Professor, School of Maritime Management, Indian Maritime University, appreciated The Week for conducting the event.
“We are actually amazed at the long list of eminent personalities from maritime sector which The week has got together and each of them has put so much on our plate that it has been a veritable feast of what is what, who is who, coming from who’s who in the maritime sector.”