Category Archives: Sustainability

New shipping regulation to combat global warming is under fire

Posted on January 16, 2023 by | 1 comment

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has issued their rules for the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII), which is intended to combat global warming by reducing carbon emissions. It’s been years in the making.

But some of those affected by the regulation think there are flaws in the index which can produce some unintended consequences.

We know that many ships are chartered– they are operated by firms or people who are not their owners. Charter contracts determine how the ship will be operated and how the ship owner will be paid for allowing the use of his ship. But the contracts may allow the charterer to operate the ship in a way that reduces the CII score and causes the ship to fall into a lower class. Perhaps the ship falls into Class E which says the ship should be withdrawn from commerce– sentenced to the shipbreaker.

The Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), a non-governmental group that offers clauses for contracts addressing numerous international shipping issues, has prepared a contract clause for chartering contracts. This is a useful starting point, because BIMCO contracts and clauses are often used as a starting point for making a charter contract. Use of the BIMCO contracts or clauses is totally voluntary.

The article below explains some of the issues that can arise between charterers and owners, with equations to boot. The essence of the problem is that the index is based on ship capacity, not cargo carried. So sailing empty miles improves your score on the index two ways– first because sailing light burns less fuel, and second because the miles add to the denominator of the measure, reducing it. The examples given show the effect.

Many feel the index should be based on carrying cargo. And some believe the BIMCO clause will not be workable in contracts, and will not use it. But the problem remains of how to divide responsibility between ship owner and charterer for managing the CII score.

I tend to believe any rule is better than nothing. And I think charterers and shipowners will work out how to manage the contract problem. As for empty sailing or sitting in port, I don’t think anyone wants to sail without a paying cargo, or suffer delays even to improve the index. So everyone, owners and charterers, will continue to fill their ships when they can, and sail shorter routes when they can, simply because it’s expensive to operate the ship you’ve chartered; you have to earn a profit at it.

For all the complaining, the CII is still a good thing. We will have to see if it can be tweaked to everyone’s satisfaction.

Greg Miller·Wednesday, December 21, 2022

New shipping regulation to combat global warming is under fire

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Posted in Logistics, Shipping, Sustainability

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No green shipping corridors without landside infrastructure

Posted on December 1, 2022 by | 1 comment

Green shipping corridors are the latest effort to create strategies for ESG compliance, particularly environmental, for the global shipping industry. These corridors are starting to show up in the planning stages. The intent is to create a connected system of ports that have all the improvements necessary to allow those ships using it to achieve a high level of compliance with green shipping standards.

That means the availability of fuels that meet international green standards such as those of IMO 2022, as well as green technology for loading and storage of containers and other products; and yard equipment that meets green operating standards.

Of these perhaps ensuring the availability of the fuels required is the most challenging. Availability alone is not enough; the price must be competitive, and sufficient storage must be in place; and long-term availability must be assured. The variety of fuels now under consideration for green ocean transport is a challenge. In addition to LSFO, some ships will soon require green methanol; major players such as Maersk and CMA-CGM are investing in methanol-powered ships. And recent studies have shown that fuels can burn greener, but the means of their production and storage have to be included in the fuel evaluation. An interesting study of this was made by Bureau Veritas (BV), a classification society, which described in detail the greenness from well to wake of a wide variety of power options from biodiesel and HS/LSFO to methanol and ammonia. Not all of these are easy to make and store.

So infrastructure will be incredibly important for the green corridors.

Some newly-announced corridors start from Singapore, which already has a large fuel infrastructure, and is a globally important financial center for dealing in fuels. That will be a tremendous advantage. European ports like Rotterdam and American ports like New York already have quite a bit of financial and storage infrastructure. These ports are already part of announced green corridors. However, even at these developed ports some of the alternative low emissions fuels are not available, nor is there the handling capability present.

The interview with the CEO of GCMD casts useful light on what’s needed.

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Prof Lynn Loo, CEO of GCMD, in an interview at TOC Asia.

Much of the focus in decarbonising shipping is on the vessels, however, without developing landside infrastructure projects such as green corridors cannot take off.

Marcus Hand | Nov 30, 2022

No green shipping corridors without landside infrastructure

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Posted in Logistics, Ports, Shipping, Supply Chains, Sustainability

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Counting the cost

Posted on November 15, 2022 by | 1 comment

Richard Butcher has written an interesting article on the large quantity of excess containers floating around the world today. Many of these containers are plugging up the yards of major and minor ports, causing longer delays in cargo handling. The space issue is important because with more space you can arrange inbound and outbound containers for easy loading and easy drayage to the customer or warehouse.

He makes a strong point— that containers are held as assets on the books of ocean carriers, and they don’t want to write off too many at a time. Obviously, the costs of holding them don’t outweigh the value of keeping them in the container liners’ eyes.

While managing the inventory of empty containers and aging them aggressively is a great idea, I don’t believe the container carriers have enough motivation to do much. It’s very true that we now have the software and technology for tracking and identifying these containers easily, and managing them one by one.

But empty containers are packaging materials, and already we have seen in domestic industries the close attention retailers and firms such as Amazon have paid to the waste caused by packaging. One of the reasons is the downstream cost of disposing of it.

Containers are also packaging waste, and should be if extra cost were added to storing them empty, it would induce carriers to cut down their stocks. We have evidence of this. Moves by ports to add detention costs to containers that sit idle for days have already induced carriers to move out their containers, even though in some cases the charges have never been enforced.

One difference between containers and the Amazon box you get with your shipment is that the container is reusable. Actually, the customer may reuse the Amazon box; I know I do. But that is relying on a chance event; after a while if I have nothing to ship, I may send it to our local recycling. Of course I pay for the recycling through my taxes, and Amazon doesn’t directly pay, nor do the charges show up in their books. This strategy is not effective for a major item like a container.

However, I propose that ports and yards, or perhaps political entities, such as the US or EU, or state governments, institute a recycling charge for containers left beyond the limit of days set. Containers left past that time would be carted off, cut up for scrap steel, and the costs of the removal and disposal be charged to the ocean carriers. I further propose that the scrap steel value be retained by the governments, perhaps for use in port and yard improvement projects; I don’t care much, since I don’t think it will be too big. It’s like condemning an unsightly property that is blighting a neighborhood.

This proposal would immediately place an accounting cost on ocean carriers. They would have to plan for how many containers would be lost through this process, and accrue the charges they are likely to receive for container disposal. This additional cost should certainly be enough to encourage efforts at tracking, removing containers from yards, and getting them back to exporting ports for reuse. Loss of the asset and paying for its loss will provide motivation for the ocean carriers to take care of their own waste.

If the US or EU would put such provisions into effect it might do the trick. These are the largest importing nations in the world, and they have the most empty containers around. But I think if they led, other nations around the world would follow.

China might not; it would put a dent in their container manufacturing business, which is mostly state-owned. But it would put a stop to the practice of buying new containers instead of recycling old ones, and charging the shipper for the new container.

Actually, since China is a major source of steel production, one could view the manufacture of containers as a form of ‘dumping’ at below the cost of manufacture. But trying to resolve this through the WTO would take forever, and have no certain outcome, like most of the past disputes on trade presented there.

Taxing the old empties and disposing of them would cut through the noise and begin placing the cost of the packaging and the ‘pollution’ it generates squarely on the ocean carriers. And it would force them to recognize the costs they are generating in their books, hurting their bottom lines.

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Richard Butcher | Nov 14, 2022

Counting the cost

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Posted in Logistics, Shipping, Sustainability

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