Improving sustainability, while remaining profitable, is an existential challenge for maritime businesses. However, there is no single solution to achieving decarbonisation and it will not happen overnight.
This article is part of a series written by people across shipping in response to this question about how to deploy a hypothetical TradeWinds Sustainable Shipping Fund:
How, where and why would you invest $1bn for the best return in sustainable shipping, as the industry grapples with the need to cut carbon emissions, improve efficiency and keep cargoes moving in a world facing multiple economic and political challenges? The investment will be made now and ideally held for the next seven years to the end of the decade. As an added bonus, give one policy or regulation you would like to implement from 1 January 2023 to benefit shipping?
Curbing emissions requires industry-wide collaboration to develop a balanced ecosystem of long and short-term solutions.
That is because some of the most necessary solutions for the industry to achieve net zero — such as future fuels and more efficient engines — will require significant time and investment.
Although worthy goals should absolutely be invested in, there are solutions that can be implemented today in order to drive immediate emission reductions.
Adopting digital technologies can provide a solution for the industry’s current fleet and can be deployed with little, if not any, downtime.
Technology solutions that allow for more efficient fleet management, voyage planning or port operations can deliver reductions in emissions and uncover other opportunities for sustainability today.
As regulatory pressure to decarbonise ramps up, digital technology is the most immediate and effective way for the industry to start curbing emissions today, whilst we wait for the sector’s longer-term solutions to be in a position to be rolled out.
What is more, digitalisation is a journey of stepwise changes — one that will improve and compound over time and over the lifetime of a vessel.
However, as each organisation within the maritime industry will be at a different stage of its own journey, there is still much work to be done to bridge the gaps — break the silos — between digital systems.
It is why I would split the $1bn. Half would be dedicated to setting the foundations for a digitally mature, sustainable maritime industry, helping to deliver solutions that enable ships and shores to better communicate, so that the industry can operate more smoothly, efficiently, and sustainably.
The other half would go towards longer-term, hardware-focused decarbonisation technology.
