World Bunkering > News > Summer 2010 > Mission impossible?

Over the last couple of years, the IBC bunker conference has taken on a reputation as one that seeks to deal with the issues that the industry will face in the near future, rather than those that are already on its doorstep. This year was no exception. Taking ‘Mission impossible’ as its theme, the conference set out to explore the disconnect between the challenges posed by current and pending legislation, and the technology available to meet it.

Opening the conference, former IBIA chairman Fritz Fredriksen – now something of a poacher turned gamekeeper as conservation officer in charge of Arctic shipping at WWF – pointed out that there has been a huge rally in legislation governing the bunker industry, with more to come, while technology is lagging behind.

Conference chairman Tore Morten Wetterhus, ceo of DNVPS, agreed that regulations would be the greatest driver of change, with the most significant regulations still being those laid out in MARPOL Annex VI. “Where you force change, there will be reaction,” Wetterhus said. The aim of the conference was to set out what form this reaction might take. Wetterhus emphasised that there is no one single solution to the problem, and that it is important to have lots of options to pick and choose from.

Cutting down on CO²

By the end of the conference, attendees would have been very familiar with the slide representing the introduction of MEPC sulphur limits, which appeared in a number of presentations. However, while the timetable for the sulphur control is well-established, many of the speakers focused on the need to reduce other emissions, in particular CO², and mechanisms to do so. As IBIA chief executive Ian Adams warned: “If progress on MAPOL Annex VI is anything to go by, we’ll get an agreement on greenhouse gases sooner rather than later.”

Thor Jorgen Guttormsen, president of the Norwegian Shipowners Association, pointed out the full scale of the challenge facing shipping. With world population predicted to grow from 6 to 9 billion by 2050, the shipping market will need to expand dramatically at the same time that it is expected to cut its emission levels to a fraction of what they are today. “It is easy to see the negatives in this, but with trillions of dollars to be invested, there must be opportunities,” he said.

Guttormsen was optimistic about a possible changeover to distillates, saying that “no shipowner would be against better quality fuel. The cost should be passed on to the end consumers”. However, other speakers pointed out that this was easier said than done, with Wilh Wilhelmsen’s Svein Sorlie saying that this approach “grossly underestimates the complexity of the shipping market”. Moreover, Sorlie said, shipowners were often seen as best-placed to absorb the extra fuel costs, even where this was not in fact the case.

So far, Guttormsen said, shipowners “haven’t done a lot” to address the CO² issue, but there is a great deal that can be done. “Operationally, I think we can easily save at least 10% of CO² – Hoegh did so last year, and will do so again this year.”

Theory and practice

A session on Friday morning was devoted to looking at precisely how companies are achieving these reductions – though some of them might not have agreed with the ‘easy’ definition. Jan Otto de Kat, Head of Innovation at AP Moller-Maersk, said that between 2007 and 2015, Maersk Tanker is aiming for a 15% reduction on CO² per tonne/km, while in the container sector, Maersk Line is looking at a 20% reduction per teu/km. Achieving this goal, however, will mean that ships need to be optimised in every sense, including ventilation and generation systems, trim calibration and waste heat recovery mechanisms. Above all, though, it is speed that will make an immense difference. In a study carried out on containerships, Maersk concluded that is was not feasible to obtain a 30% CO² reduction without reducing speed. An 11-14% reduction in emissions was the best possible result whilst operating at the design speed of 25 knots. However, if the speed were lowered to 23 knots, savings of 30% could be achieved.

Svein Sorlie, group senior vice president at Wilh Wihelmsen, also emphasised the importance of slow steaming in any attempt to cut emissions, saying that “speed reduction is one area that could give immediate reduction of emissions. “From our point of view, one weakness of the EEDI is that vessels operating at high speed can continue to do so – it will have a much greater effect on slower vessels,” he continued. “From an environmental point of view, it is much better to introduce speed limits at sea. However, we need to discuss how they could be phased in without causing unacceptable havoc.”

Bringing down speed also makes other forms of propulsion more viable, including the introduction of wind power, and fuel cells. For the moment, though, these remain experimental, with Bjorn Stigner, manager of tanker chartering at Stena, admitting that the large solar panel on the company’s new, fuel-efficient handymax design was “really just to show off”. The changes that reduce average fuel consumption at 14 knots from 33 tonnes of bunker fuel per day to 24 are the result of ‘tweaks’ to the design. Introducing small design changes to optimise ship performance is something that shipyards are increasingly willing to do, as the slowdown in orders makes them more willing to accept changes to the standard, he said.

A design revolution?

Both Intertanko’s Dragos Rauta and Sveinung Oftedal, senior adviser to the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, pointed out that changing regulations will have an increasing impact on tanker design. Sveinung Oftedal said that, while there is not currently any legislation concerning the design index, environmental regulations are only going to get tighter. Given that ships built from 2020 onwards could well still be operating in 2050, ships being designed and tested now will potentially need to meet much higher standards.

Rauta focused on the practical changes that will be needed, saying that the prevailing tanker construction mode – with one or two large bunker tanks – will need to be replaced with the capacity to carry three of four different fuel grades. However, while larger changes may be in the pipeline, from now until 2015, Rauta pointed out that “fuel will be the main means for compliance”.

As a result of that, he said, “responsibility for compliance and control should not be left with the ships”. In practical terms, this would mean that:

• IMO should have a register of local suppliers
• Bunkers should be checked before supply
• No onboard blending during delivery, as this removes any guarantee of compliant fuel.

Not the enemy after all?

The changing attitude of business was something that was emphasised by many speakers, not least Rasmus Hansson, secretary general of the World Wildlife Fund. “When I started in environmentalism, business was the enemy. That is changing,” he said. Businesses are seeing self-interest in changing their ways, and they are the ones who are able to make changes – and are doing so, he said. He also explained the reason for what is seen as environmentalists’ sometimes disproportionate interest in shipping, which is that it offers a solution – but in order to be a solution, it has to be done right.

All this should rather have appealed to the audience, several of whom had solutions to sell, and many of who represented companies that are already making efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Thrown in casually on the final slide, however, was one further aim of the WWF – a total ban on the use and tank storage of HFO as a fuel for ships, in order to reduce marine pollution – that was less likely to win the approval of many of those attending the conference.

The future of HFO?

This suggestion was taken up by James Corbett of the University of Delaware, who suggested that the global shipping sector faced three likely scenarios:

• No more use of residual fuel at all
• A full-scale revival of residual fuel as technology allows shipping to use it in a clean manner, and/or business interests trump environmental concern in some areas
• Residual used in some geographic areas only.

He pointed to modern trends for rapid growth in the area of middle distillate production, while the production of fuel oil has hardly grown at all, and in the US has been steadily declining to the point where it makes up no more than 3% of the barrel, despite an increase in shipping activity. On current projections, it looks as if there will be enough ultra low-sulphur fuel available to meet ECA requirements when the US introduces them, but Corbett doubts whether there will be enough available to allow shipping to meet the 2020 target of 0.1% sulphur worldwide unless something changes.

So what came out of the conference? After lively debate from every corner of the shipping industry and from the regulators, the consensus seems to be that the industry can and should set ambitious goals in terms of emissions – it shouldn’t wait for the regulators.