Sustainability to the fore at BIMCO general meeting
People, energy, the environment and the ability of maritime technology to reinvent itself alongside a new paradigm formed the basis of BIMCO’s general meeting sustainability session in Vancouver, Canada, held 6-8 June.
Ship operators were offered a ‘big picture’ of changing population trends, energy constraints and the need to husband the environment by demographic expert Dr David Foot. Jose Maria Figueres, chairman of the Carbon War Room, who suggested that climate change provided both challenges and opportunities for business, while Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency pointed to the oil price volatility amid the political instability in the mid-east and North Africa.
Germanischer Lloyd board member Dr Hermann Klein demonstrated how the industry could harvest the “low hanging fruit” from technological and operational advances that produced more efficient ships while coincidentally protecting the environment.
Major demographic changes that seemed certain to affect world trade were anticipated by Foot, who forecast the reversal of population increases in important economies such as Japan, China and much of Europe, where they were “running out of young workers” and would find it hard to sustain economic growth. Population growth in India, though challenged by poverty, was more secure, while countries like Turkey and Brazil saw young and well-educated populations poised for strong economic growth.
The industry was facing challenges on emissions and ballast, said Figueres, but short-term thinking predominates. He suggested that a positive proactive and enterprise-led policy on climate change could become “a good business opportunity”. But the industry, along with others, needed to re-invent its lifestyles along a low carbon economy.
Besides oil price volatility, commented Birol, the whole energy situation had been given “significant lessons” from the Japanese earthquake and the knock-on effect upon the world nuclear industry which currently provided some 14% of power, putting greater reliance on fossil fuels, which represented the worst environmental outcome.
Klein suggested that many answers to the demand for greater sustainability could be provided by better designed ships, with many improvements relatively easy to put in place, such as dimensional and hydrodynamic changes, greater focus on optimising efficiency, and lowering speeds to save fuel. Fuel prices, he suggested remained a huge driver for longer term environmental and technical change, citing the example of a 12,000TEU containership, which would use $1 billion worth of heavy oil at today’s prices of $600/ton, 10 times more than its capital cost. However, he warned that while there were great improvements possible, the growth in the world fleet pointed to the need for more radical ideas on sustainability.
Governments had been largely ineffective in devising fair policies for improved sustainability in shipping, with a general lack of regulatory direction, which, speakers suggested put the onus upon the industry to produce workable solutions. Pressure would come from consumers, shippers, charterers who would increasingly demand cleaner, greener maritime transport systems.
Sustainability was the principal theme throughout the meeting, and a group of senior industry figures – BW Group chairman Dr Helmut Sohmen, Dr Sun Jia Kang, vice president of COSCO, Michael Behrendt, chairman of Hapag Lloyd and Danish Ship Finance chairman Per Skovhus debated the issues raised by the earlier speakers, along with outgoing BIMCO president Robert Lorenz-Meyer and president-designate Yudhishthir Khatau.
