Two well-known shipping names are deeply involved in what is painted as a massive green initiative, but which environmental organisations want to ban — seabed mining of battery minerals.
That puts Maersk Supply Service and Allseas in a squeeze in terms environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Is what they are doing decarbonisation, or is it planetary devastation?
The Danish offshore owner and the Dutch ocean construction specialist, along with commodities and mining powerhouse Glencore, are key suppliers to Canada's DeepGreen Metals in a project to mine about 3m square km of seabed between Hawaii and Mexico.
The venture has always been pitched as a planet-saver. Now the pitch has gone public in a transaction from which DeepGreen expects to emerge with a Nasdaq listing as TMC The Metals Co.
So how can hoovering up a continent-sized patch of the ocean floor with a 4.5 km (2.8 mile) pipe be a green play?
DeepGreen backers argue that seabed mining of battery metals will speed up the electrification of the world's automobile fleet.
Nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese conveniently concentrated in baseball-sized nodules along a strip longer than western Europe can be collected with far less environmental and social disturbance than from open-pit mining.
Seabed mining equals faster decarbonisation, in other words. And these days, decarbonisation is something you can take to the bank — literally so, in a PowerPoint presentation to show your ESG-focused lenders.
Maersk Supply Service — a brand of AP Moller Maersk — goes along with the argument, at least as far as exploration is concerned.
TradeWinds has reported on DeepGreen, and in a 23 April statement Maersk spoke up for itself, saying it is "committed by its current contract with DeepGreen until the end of 2021".
“Our vision is to take part in solving the energy challenges of tomorrow and actively support new ocean industries such as offshore renewables, deepsea mineral explorations and ocean cleaning," said an official who declined to be identified because the parent company is currently in a financially quiet period.
"Maersk Supply Service sees deepsea minerals as a potential source of metals going into batteries as we electrify our transport systems."
Maersk — which has earned so much equity in lieu of charter hire that it now holds a seat on the DeepGreen board — painted itself as "providing services in deepsea research to enable environmental impact and baseline assessment", and "[allowing] researchers, governments, NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and all stakeholders involved to make informed decisions".
"We see it as a prerequisite for all emerging ocean activities to retrieve subsea data so our customers can develop these frontier industries in the most sustainable way," the company official said.
Not so fast
WWF International and Greenpeace — among others calling for a worldwide moratorium on seabed mining — reject the battery argument in abundant and specific detail.
“Claims for its potential climate benefits are highly uncertain and pay little consideration to its wider environmental and socioeconomic consequences,” WWF researchers wrote in a 93-page report in September 2020.
"The short-term benefits from rushing to deepsea minerals should not be mistaken for the structural changes we need instead to accomplish long-term, low-carbon development."
Seabed mining could ruin the deepsea as a carbon sink, wrote Greenpeace in a similar report, which also rejects the claim that DeepGreen benefits its Pacific island state sponsors.
"The obscure workings and acquisitions of DeepGreen to gain exploration contracts via ostensibly local entities sponsored by Nauru, Kiribati and Tonga casts doubt over the extent to which sponsoring states would financially benefit," wrote Greenpeace in a similar report.
Besides non-governmental organisations, the European Parliament has called for a moratorium since 2018. A previous state sponsor, Papua New Guinea became a sceptic after the 2019 failure of a deepsea mining project there. It has been joined by fellow Pacific states Fiji and Vanuatu.
Both Maersk and an Allseas spokesman expressed confidence to TradeWinds in the regulatory competence of the International Seabed Authority, a body that environmental group's see as dominated by the miners.
Assuming Maersk and Allseas are sincere about their green intentions, they illustrate the dilemma for many an industrial or shipping companyin the era of the ESG investor and environmentally responsible banker.
As with the question of how to decarbonise marine propulsion, it is not a matter of intentions, but of outcomes. There is simply nobody standing by to tell you what will be considered the green thing to do in the end.
