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]]>The area to be protected was heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and includes Wall Street, $60 billion worth of property, 75% of the city’s subway lines, 90,000 residents, and home to 500,000 jobs. The $10 billion spent will buy Manhattan protection from sea level rise until the end of the century.
In the borough of Staten Island, also heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy, a protective $615 million seawall funded through the federal government, is to be installed on its eastern shore. And in Queens, a new barrier and boardwalk are being built to protect the southern approaches to the Long Island neighbourhood.
Jesse Keenan, of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is quoted in a Bloomberg article stating “I can’t think of anywhere else in America where there would be a stronger impetus to make this kind of investment,” referring to the Lower Manhattan barrier. Keenan continues, “Given the elevation and total amount of economic output and productivity from this part of the country, we really have no other alternative.”
Keenan notes that the Army Corps of Engineers and Congress will have to be involved because altering a coastline and watercourse will necessitate environmental impact studies and analysis of changes to the dynamics of the offshore environment.
Stated New York’s Mayor, Bill de Blasio, “After Sandy you don’t find many climate-change deniers in New York City. This is the existential threat, the core issue that we all must face as soon as possible.”
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]]>“One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50 million cars”
A scary thought when you consider that the December Paris meeting on climate change chose not to establish emission standards on marine shipping for the present. That 2009 article further stated, ” just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760 million cars.”
In 2009 world maritime shipping produced as much as 30% of atmospheric nitrogen oxide pollution and almost 4% of all climate change emissions. That was 2009 and the problem remains and in fact has grown as China has added a number of super container ships to the world’s oceans. Each of these uses diesel engines as big as land-based power stations and all run on bunker oil. But before we talk about bunker oil in greater detail we should talk about the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and its efforts to date to address global ship pollution.
The IMO has created MARPOL, an international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships. In 2010 it adopted Annex VI, a provision for shipping companies to address sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter air pollution with an agreed to emission reduction strategy to be implemented starting in 2020.
Because marine pollution was not part of COP21 it appears the industry got a “get out of jail” free 5-year pass. This is indeed unfortunate because “pollution from the world’s 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year.” Which brings us back to the cause of this pollution, the industry’s heavy reliance on bunker fuels, the dirtiest source of burnable energy in commercial use today.
At one time bunker fuel was an answer to an even dirtier marine fuel, coal. Back in the 19th century and indeed into the early 20th, coal was the marine fuel of choice. But World War One marine technology advances led to a wholesale conversion of marine fleets which now began using oil. One of the motivators behind Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 was to ensure the country established dominance over Indonesian oil by eliminating America’s Pacific fleet, giving the Empire a buffer to continue its South Asian conquests. The gamble failed but bunker oil remained the marine fuel of choice. It was seen as far cleaner than coal and far more transportable. But as a fuel for a 21st century in a war to combat climate change, there can be nothing much worse (coal excepted).
Bunker oil is the residual oil left after refineries distill gasoline, diesel and natural gas from raw crude. Bunker oil, therefore, contains all the impurities left over after distillation including residual heavy metals, sulfur and particulate matter. It comes in many grades determined by viscosity. The dirtiest and cheapest fuels are the most viscous. When burned it produces a powerful energy punch liter per liter but along with that energy comes a high volume of airborne pollutants in the form of ash (particulate matter) and greenhouse gases.
Are there alternatives to bunker fuel?
The answer is yes.
In the past we have written about marine innovations to address the bunker fuel challenge, technologies like advanced scrubbers to clean emissions, rigid sails with integrated solar panels, hybrid diesel-electric drives and more. These have largely been one off projects with no significant impact on marine fleets.
Interim alternative fuels that could be introduced into the mix include liquid natural gas (LNG) and bio-fuel (methanol). These are preferable to bunker fuel because they produce less greenhouse gas emissions. They could be the interim answer for the industry, a bridging technology before the transition to fossil-fuel free marine transportation systems.
LNG as an Alternative to Bunker Fuel
LNG is a controversial topic in Canada right now. In British Columbia, Royal Dutch Shell in the last month put a hold on a $40 billion (CDN) project to build a LNG export terminal. The Canadian government had recently green-lighted Shell the permit to proceed but volatility in the world oil markets led to its 9-month startup postponement. The natural gas source for this project are fields in the Horn River and Montney Basins of northeast British Columbia where fracking operations have been ongoing for more than 60 years. There are existing pipelines in British Columbia to transport the gas to the west coast where it would be liquefied and put on board ships headed to South Asian markets.
LNG is currently being used as an energy source for marine shipping. Last year a United States marine carrier commissioned its first LNG-fueled container ship as well as a bulk LNG supply ship. The European Union (EU) published its own 2015 report on the environmental advantages of Using LNG to fuel marine fleets. The EU report concluded that LNG is attractive for its environmental impact but that a profitable business model had yet to be established. In light of the drop in world oil prices since that report was published, the business model for a marine LNG fleet remains dubious. To date there are 20 to 25 LNG-fuelled vessels in operation, less than 1% of the total commercial marine fleet. The advantages of LNG are this. As a fuel it meets all the environmental standards established under MARPOL’s Annex VI. The disadvantages – the marine technology implementation is expensive. Converting existing fleets to LNG will take considerable time, and LNG fuel infrastructure equivalent to current bunker fuel sources is non-existent. The LNG terminals planned for British Columbia could contribute to this infrastructure but the current plans are focused on LNG export. That is understandable considering the lack of significant marine fleet of LNG-fuelled ships.
Bio-fuel as an Alternative to Bunker Fuel
The first methanol-powered ferry made its debut in March 2015 in Europe. The EU’s efforts to reduce emissions in local shipping lanes, inspired this project. The ship, Stena Germanica, is operating between Kiel, Germany and Gothenburg, Sweden. It uses a dual fuel system capable of running totally on methanol, or marine gas oil as a backup.
The EU hopes this demonstration technology will prove an effective live test for methanol as a future marine fuel. Part of the project includes development of engine conversion kits to retrofit existing ships reliant on bunker fuel. The project also includes the building of appropriate port infrastructure for supplying methanol as well as a methanol-supply vessel.
Maersk in cooperation with the United States Navy is also experimenting with algae-based biodiesel, a two-year trial on the container ship, Maersk Kalmar.
Another bio-fuel experiment called GLEAMS, uses glycerine-based fuel, a byproduct of biodiesel production, in marine shipping.
Methanol fuel cells are being developed by a consortium of companies from Finland, Sweden, the UK, Italy and Norway.
In the United States, the Coast Guard is testing bio-butanol for its small marine craft.
Is the effort by marine operators and governments sufficient to meet the global need to reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions? Not yet. Let’s hope as COP21 commitments begin to take hold that this important omitted sector becomes an active participant in a global effort to transition to a low-carbon future.
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]]>We’ll also look at the impact of these new designs on shipping lanes. With larger ships incapable of using the Panama and Suez Canals, investment in new canals will become a priority.
And finally we’ll look at how climate change will alter existing routes as Arctic ice melts and sea levels rise.
Ships
Today container and bulk carrier ships are fossil-fuel dependent. These include heavy fuel oil, marine gas oil, gas-to-liquid fuel, and liquefied natural gas. Increasingly the marine shipping industry is addressing the issue of marine pollution including emissions. Many ships today use exhaust abatement technology consisting of open-loop scrubbers and catalytic reduction similar to the technology deployed with automobiles running internal combustion engines.
Ship emissions using heavy fuel oil contribute to acid rain while liquid natural gas decreases acidification by as much as 90% not taking into consideration the production processes required to make the fuel. None of the fossil fuels used by marine ships today can be described as carbon neutral with the highest global warming potential connected to gas-to-liquid fuel.
What technologies and strategies are shipbuilders and ship owners deploying in the 21st century to address pollution, particularly CO2?
Going Nuclear – the first nuclear reactors were not built to generate power for mass consumption. They were built to be the power plants for naval ships. The first of these was the USS Nautilus, a submarine completed in 1955. Submarines were ideal test beds for nuclear power. With no need for oxygen to feed fuel-based engine technology, nuclear submarines could remain submerged for days running at very high-speed. Today there are approximately 140 nuclear-powered ships in service operating 180 on board small nuclear reactors. The majority are submarines with a smaller number of aircraft carriers, cruisers and ice breakers. There have been some pioneering merchant ships that used nuclear power plants such as the NS Savannah. But these have proven commercial failures with few exceptions.
What is making nuclear attractive is its carbon footprint which at the power plant level is zero. In addition nuclear-powered ships have demonstrated an excellent safety record. It seems, however, that any nuclear power accident leads to global condemnation of the technology. As a result of the Fukushima post-tsunami disaster in 2011 several projects involving large Chinese shipping companies building nuclear-powered container ships have been put on hold.
Despite Fukushima, Babcock International’s marine division has considered developing a nuclear-powered liquid natural gas tanker. Lloyd’s Register along with a number of major ship builders from European Union countries have also been studying commercial nuclear-powered ships using very small modular reactors intended as power plants for tankers. The most promising projects are in the following ship categories: large, long-distance bulk carriers that travel between dedicated ports with the infrastructure to support them, passenger cruise ships that combine nuclear with diesel back up, large tug boats capable of trans-oceanic hauling of conventional ships, and high-speed bulk carriers.
Hybrid Engine Technology – Companies like Siemens are delivering diesel-electric propulsion systems for large merchant ships, naval vessels and smaller boats. This technology delivers lower fuel and energy consumption and reduced CO2 emissions. Additional advantages over conventional diesel include greater cruising range, higher reliability and less noise pollution. Today new cruise ships combine electrical power with diesel or gas turbine. Advantages include reduced power plant size making for more flexible ship design, lower weight, higher engine efficiency even at low speeds, fuel and cost savings, reduced noise and much lower pollutant emissions.
Some manufacturers are combining solar with conventional power plants on ships. The M/V Auriga Leader is a new class of cargo ship that deploys 328 solar panels to provide energy for the ship’s main electrical grid. The shipbuilder, NYK, has developed prototypes for an even more advanced modular hybrid container ship, the NYK Super Eco Ship. The ship is designed to produce 70% less CO2 emissions than current commercial vessels. Designed as four semi-autonomous modules, the ship upon arrival at a destination port will be capable of splitting into pieces with one part picking up while the other offloads cargo. The power plant includes liquid natural gas fuel cells, solar arrays and eight retractable telescoping masts, each bearing a light-weight airfoil sail. NYK plans to deliver this vessel to market by 2030.
CargoXpress is a small port container ship that combines sail and solar or sail and gas turbine technology.The air foil consists of composite material and opens once at sea like the upper part of a clam shell. Using solar technology the CargoXpress can handle up to 200 containers. Designed for Mediterranean Sea shallow ports the ship includes a cantilevered crane capable of unloading containers onshore without the need for port equipment.
Solar Power – Pure solar-powered ships present many challenges. An experimental vessel, the Tûranor PlanetSolar, features an upper deck covered with almost 500 square meters of photovoltaic solar panels. Operated by a four-person crew the power plant consists of a solar array supplemented by lithium batteries that act as solar energy storage and a power source on cloudy days and nights. The ship can travel about 200 kilometers a day using the power of the sun and at an average speed of 15 knots at night using battery power.
Thermosolar captures the heat from the sun in heat sinks made using salts such as rock salt, sodium nitrate and potassium carbonate. ABENGOA, a Spanish-owned thermal energy company is the developer of a thermosolar land-based plant in Nevada that uses the heat from molten sodium and potassium salts to drive steam turbines. The company is experimenting with a ship-sized thermosolar equivalent for short-distance marine transportation. Land-based solar collectors would generate the heat energy for the onboard molten salt thermal storage systems. Water pumped through the molten salt would convert to steam to drive turbines. Ships using this technology would need the capacity to carry not only cargo but the thermal salt because insufficient volume would not generate enough heat.
Sail and Wind Power – We are not returning to the days of rigged canvas sail. Instead companies like B9, in the U.K., and Fair Transport B.V., in the Netherlands, are building rigless sailing ships designed primarily to work using the wind.
The B9 design includes masts that fully rotate with sails that operate electronically to achieve best wind angles. Each sail is a composite of small sails that can be easily replaced. Loss of a sail does not impact general performance with live test results to-date achieving speeds of almost 25 knots. With B9 sailing ships 60% of the energy used will come from wind supplemented by gas turbines using waste-derived bio-gas only when the winds die down. B9’s market niche is lower volume routes that can maximize the use of wind power. These will include many island ports.
Ecoliner is the 8,000 ton, 120 meter-long cargo ship being developed by Fair Transport B.V. Featuring 3 free-standing sails, the ship is designed using similar technology to that being deployed by B9 with supplementary power coming from diesel-electric engines. Ecoliner is a designed to transport 200 containers using up to 90% less fuel than conventional vessels. Ecoliner should be operating by 2013.
Bigger Ships and Fewer
Maersk, Seaspan and other container shipping companies are focusing on building super-sized container ships with the capacity to hold from 10,000 to 18,000 containers per vessel. These will dwarf current container ships that have capacities of between 3,000 and 8,000.
Maersk, a Danish company, is planning to operate 30 of these super container ships with the first 10 to be delivered in 2013 and 2014. Defined as triple-E, these ships combine economies of scale, energy efficiency and environmental controls. Each ship is 400 meters (1,312 feet) long and requires 50% of the fuel currently consumed by the largest container ships. The ships are also designed to be 35 percent more energy-efficient because engine waste heat is recaptured and used to power the ship.
This new breed of container ship is not capable of using existing canals like the Panama and Suez and will principally operate on trans-oceanic routes between China, the United States and Europe. In consolidating their fleets Seaspan and Maersk will reduce the carbon footprint of their operations. This will help container operators to meet the goals of the Clean Shipping Project, an industry, sea port and government-sponsored initiative started in the North Sea off Europe’s coast and focused on corporate social responsibility related to conservation and environmental concerns.
Lower Emission Fuels
The B9 project described above is using bio-gas, a product of B9’s waste-to-biofuel manufacturing. DNV, a Norwegian company, is building propulsion systems that combine electric drives with diesel, liquid natural gas and fuel cells. The Quantum 9000 is a container ship designed to reduce its environmental footprint while capable of passing through the expanded Panama Canal opening in 2014. More than 330 meters (1,030 feet) in length, this ship reduces CO2 by 30%, nitrous oxide (N2O) by 80%, and sulfur dioxide (SO2) by 95%.
New and Expanded Shipping Lanes
Global warming is changing where merchant ships can operate. Probably the most significant change is the Arctic where the Northeast Passage above Russia, and the Northwest Passage, through Canada’s northern islands, represent short cuts from Asia to Europe and North America. A summer, ice-free Arctic Ocean is a climate change problem that benefits marine shippers looking for safe passage through the Arctic. Shorter routes means lower fuel consumption and less environmental pollution. It also means avoiding waters south of the Suez Canal where piracy near the Horn of Africa has become endemic. Climatologists are predicting passable sea routes through the Canadian Arctic by 2020 as summer sea ice continues to shrink. Russia is already operating ice breakers as a service to marine ships attempting the Northeast Passage.
As more super containers get delivered to major marine shipping companies the Arctic routes may become the preferred method of navigating between Asia, North America and Europe.
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]]>In this blog we look at marine transportation. How are we as a technical society addressing shipping and its infrastructure requirements in the 21st century?
Marine Transportation Evolution
The earliest merchant ships used manpower and wind as energy sources. Until the 19th century the means to power cargo ships remained the same. In the early 19th century steam engines began to supplement wind as a power source. By the end of the century cargo-carrying sailing ships were fast disappearing replaced by coal-powered merchant ships.
Coal gave way to oil-based engine technologies in the 20th century. The diesel engine became the primary technology using heavy fuel oils. No one expressed concern about air pollution until the latter part of the century.
The way goods got shipped changed as well, which brings us to the rise of container ships, the redesign of port facilities, radical new ship design, and changes to shipping channels and routes.
Containers
Shipping today uses containers. Containers represent the basic unit of global commerce and have been around since the 1950s. In 2011 more than 17 million moved around the world on ships. Containers, originally steel boxes approximately 12 meters (40 feet) in length, have remained unchanged for a very long time. But that is coming to an end for several reasons:
Cargoshell is one of several new container designs that has emerged. Cargoshell claims to lower the carbon footprint of individual containers. Made of fibre-reinforced composite Cargoshell is lighter than existing containers saving weight, collapsible to occupy one-quarter of the space when empty, traceable, and secure against unauthorized access. Internal sensors measure temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, air quality and presence of radioactive materials or human occupants. Composite containers are networked objects that use onboard computer systems with GPS, and a content database that sends reports to custom agents and port officials.
Ports
With these new containers ports are being redesigned to manage intelligent traffic and so are the ships that dock at them. Seaports are becoming network-centric hubs with a focus on managing containers, bulk and passenger ships using information technology to integrate security along with operational efficiency.
New 21st century technologies include networked video surveillance to monitor port perimeters and access points. Today in the United States, ports handle 17,000 containers every day with inspectors opening about 2% of this total. Intelligent container technology using RFID, GPS and electronic documentation will make it possible to analyze the contents of and track all containers entering and exiting a port. In addition imaging technology will see inside containers using x-ray and gamma rays with images transmitted by wireless networks to port officials. Port workers will use wireless devices to help them manage information and process cargo efficiently. Ports will be surrounded by intelligent fence systems with detection technology capable of sniffing out potential contraband and biological hazards and serving to help control access. All of this security and tracking technology should insure safety while not impeding the flow of cargo through the port. The net outcome should translate into faster port turnaround for cargo entering, unloading, loading and departing.
Ports will generate their own energy requirements using wave, wind and solar power supplemented by power from the grid. This will dramatically decrease the carbon footprint of port operations.
So what will it be like for ships entering ports that use the type of technology we have described?
In our next blog we look at how ship technology will evolve to compliment intelligent ports and the implications of ship evolution on existing shipping lane infrastructure. We will also look at how climate change will lead to entirely new routes across the .
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