World Maritime News
WMNF 06/12/2023
Call for port authorities to support grid upgrades
Electrifying container handling equipment is an easy win for decarbonizing terminals. But it requires upgrades to supply networks that can best be helped by ports showing aggregate demand. Port authorities are being asked to aid terminal operators seeking to upgrade electricity supplies to their facilities in an effort to decarbonize. A recent report from APM Terminals and DP World indicated a huge scope for terminals to reduce emissions using electrified container handling equipment. However, the energy requirements for this change are not insignificant and often require upgrades to the network’s electricity supply.
Read more: Lloyd’s List
China floats idea of mega port to rival Singapore
Beijing is considering constructing a massive integrated super port across islands south of Hong Kong, consolidating regional port resources to challenge Singapore’s shipping hub status. The infrastructure project, potentially costing over $20bn, is also envisaged as a strategic facility to strengthen trade and economic growth in the country’s south and drive integration of the Greater Bay Area — a mega-region encompassing nine cities in the Pearl River Delta including Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. The proposer, Liang Jianwei, a special researcher at the Counsellor’s Office of the Guangdong Provincial Government, said the super port could accommodate the world’s largest vessels, including 22,000 teu containerships, very large crude carriers and 400,000 dwt valemax ore carriers. The container section of the new port is envisioned to have an annual capacity of 45-50m teu, requiring around Yuan120bn ($16bn) investment, he revealed.
Read more: Lloyd’s List
EU makes final ETS clarifications ahead of implementation
The European Commission has adopted legislation to clarify responsible companies for shipping’s inclusion in its Emissions Trading System from 2024, with a little over a month until the world’s first carbon tax on the maritime sector is enforced. The adopted legislation requires a company to assume responsibility for a vessel’s ETS compliance. That company must provide the necessary documentation to its administering authority to prove that it was mandated by the shipowner to take on ETS obligations, which include purchasing EU Allowances (EUA) for a vessel’s CO2 emissions. Shipowners and charterers must make a contractual agreement to designate the responsible company for a vessel’s ETS compliance. However, shipowners will be responsible for vessels’ ETS obligations if the responsible company or person fails to provide the necessary documents to their administering authority.
Read more: Lloyd’s List
Carrier ETS surcharges should converge
There is still a wide disparity in the prices indicated for the initial quarter of ETS implementation. But some expect this gap to reduce as actual costs become more apparent. HMM announced that the European Emission Surcharge will see charges of between €8 and €62 per teu. On the other hand, Evergreen’s surcharge ranges between €9 and €50 per teu. “There has been a lot of uncertainty on how those surcharges need to be calculated,” Hapag-Lloyd chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen said. “I think it is becoming clearer. Especially now, it is clearer how transshipment ports will be treated. As everybody recalculates as we get closer to the end of the year, the spread between those will be smaller.” He expected that surcharges would probably all be “reasonably close together.”
Read more: Lloyd’s List
ETS cargo diversion risk not being addressed
The measures proposed by the European Commission to prevent carriers from dodging the Emissions Trading System tax by using ports outside the EU for transshipment to reduce charges have been unveiled. The EU has said it will monitor ETS tax avoidance to see if cargo diversion is taking place, with the possibility of reviewing the regulation down the line. But this is not enough, according to a statement from the Federation of European Private Port Companies and Terminals (Feport). “We need a real assessment of the impact of ETS for shipping on EU ports to be conducted now and not in two years when cargo will have left some EU ports for good,” said Feport secretary-general Lamia Kerdjoudj.
Read more: Lloyd’s List
Carriers have opportunities to ease supply imbalance
Scrapping, slippage, and slow steaming will help reduce the available capacity in the container shipping market but will not be enough to restore a balance between supply and demand. The latest market outlook from BIMCO suggests more ships than expected that were due for delivery in 2023 have been pushed back to next year. “We now forecast fleet growth of 7% in 2023,” it said. “On the other hand, we have raised our fleet growth forecast for 2024 to 8.8% and estimate 6.4% in 2025.” However, slippage would not fundamentally alter the supply problem, and the total fleet would hit 30m teu in late 2024 and 32m teu by the end of 2025.
Read more: Lloyd’s List
Carriers consider rerouting as Panama Canal restrictions bite
The drought affecting the Panama Canal, leading to reduced transits and draughts, poses “profound implications” for global container logistics that will last well into 2024. The effect of the restrictions has, to date, been felt most in the dry bulk and LNG segments. Container line shipping has faced minimal consequences from transit restrictions, although it has been affected by draught restrictions, according to Containers xChange chief executive Christian Roeloffs. He said, “The maximum draught has been decreased from 50 ft to 44 ft, with each 1 ft reduction in draught resulting in a loss of 400 teu capacity. An average container vessel can now transport 2,400 teu less.” He added that logistics providers may explore alternative shipping routes to alleviate potential disruptions.
Ocean carriers of The Alliance will halt Panama Canal transits through February for ships on three of its weekly container services between the US and Asia, opting instead for longer sea routes through the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal route from Northeast Asia takes about five to eight days longer than through the Panama Canal, but The Alliance will deploy more ships into the services to maintain their schedules.
On the other hand, Breakbulk and heavy lift operators, facing months of disruption due to draft and slot restrictions at the Panama Canal, are opting for alternative routings via South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, the Suez Canal, and Chile’s Strait of Magellan, among others, shipping executives told the Journal of Commerce.
Read more: Lloyd’s List | JOC1 | JOC2
IEA warns of carbon capture pitfall
The oil and gas industry should not rely on carbon capture to retain the status quo in the energy transition, the International Energy Agency has warned in a report. The IEA said carbon capture would be needed for industries like cement and petrochemicals. But it said the world would require an “inconceivable” 32bn tonnes of carbon captured for utilization or storage by 2050 if oil and natural gas consumption were to evolve as expected under today’s policy settings, including 23bn tonnes captured directly from the air, to limit global warming to 1.5°C. “The necessary carbon capture technologies would require 26,000 terawatt hours of electricity generation to operate in 2050, which is more than global electricity demand in 2022,” it said. “And it would require over $ 3.5 trillion in annual investments from today through to mid-century, which is equal to the entire industry’s annual average revenue in recent years.”
Read more: Lloyd’s List