Reducing emissions into the sea and air by relying on low sulphur fuels, biocide-free anti-foulants and ballastwater treatment is far from enough. Fossil fuel driven engines are yesterday’s technology and to reach a zero impact on the environment we need ballast-free ships powered by sun, wind and waves.

Climate change – the biggest threat to our environment

By Lena Blomqvist, Vice President,
Environment, Wallenius Wilhelmsen,
lena.blomqvist@2wglobal.com

Scientists have linked the catastrophic hurricane Katrina and other environmental events to hit our planet in 2005 with global warming. Arguments are already raging over the connection between global warming and hurricane Katrina, which left, at one stage, 80 per cent of New Orleans under water and great tracts of the coastal regions of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in ruins.
Many scientific observers agree that rising sea levels and temperatures have in some part contributed to the damage caused in the southern USA. Scientists also say the problem was linked to the loss of the wetlands along the edges of rivers, particularly the Mississippi, and near the coast itself – vital for absorbing and storing floodwaters – that provided New Orleans with a natural defence against storm surges such as the one generated by Katrina.

Increasing temperatures have
grave implications
The increasing rise of global temperatures has grave implications. Atty. Antonio A. Oposa, Jr., one of Asia’s leading voices in the international arena of environmental law based is reported to have said that when an imbalance in global temperature occurs, the climatic system is disrupted. As a consequence in certain regions, there can be massive floods; in other areas, intense drought.
Indeed, as we saw in Europe over last summer a tornado ripping through North West England while the European continent was hit by meteorological extremes the like of which we have not seen for generations, culminating in floods in Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Bulgaria and Austria. Yet just a few hundred kilometres further south we saw drought-ridden parts of Italy, Spain and Portugal devastated by forest fires.

Scientists speculate that the excessive conditions appear to be linked to the jet stream in the upper atmosphere, which changed direction last year, locking-in high pressure in the west and driving depressions across to the east. Scientists are also now alarmed at the rate glaciers are melting because of global warming. Melting glaciers, in turn, lead to rises in sea level and thus increased risks of flooding.

Global warming and its consequence, climate change, result from the accumulation of so called greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Closer to home, for us who work in the marine environment, is the impact that this will have on our world – the oceans that our ships traverse every day.

Only renewable energy sources. The streamlined, dynamic pentamaran does not release any emissions to the environment and does not require any ballast water.

Climate change could wreak havoc
Coinciding with the flood damage in the southern United States last August was a UK-based WWF report that claimed that climate change would seriously affect the UK marine environment, deepening the decline of cod, threatening the future survival of some sea bird colonies and causing wide-scale coastal disruption.

While this was essentially a UK-sourced report it has implications for all of us who work in shipping. The report, “Vulnerability Assessment of the North-East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change”, said that an increase in sea surface temperature will be a major factor in further disrupting the breeding, feeding and growing cycles of fish, and, in turn, sea birds. It warned that this will be spurred by impacts on plankton, the major food source of many fish and the foundation of the whole marine environment.

This really hits home when one realizes that plankton is the start of the food chain. It is the bedrock of all life on this planet.

Storm surges could impact
on coastal areas
The report also found that major storm surges – temporary increases in sea level caused by atmospheric pressures and strong winds – will have destructive impacts on coastal areas as they become more frequent, as was seen in USA, Europe and Asia last year. Storm surges, said the report, could cause flooding while sea level rises may also reduce coastal habitats of sea birds through erosion and damage to nesting sites.

Europe’s North Sea, where plankton is reported to have already changed dramatically, is likely, said the report, to be hit the hardest by climate change. It claimed that this would have a direct impact on cod stocks, in addition to the existing pressures from fisheries.

Andrew Lee, Director of Campaigns at WWF, said: ”This report shows that climate change has the power to deepen this crisis and to completely turn our marine world upside down – disrupting and changing the entire ecosystem. Climate change will cause dramatic disruption to our seas over the coming years. Future planning of our marine environment must take into account the effects of climate change to help our seas adapt to the challenges that will come”.

The E/S “Orcelle” concept vessel – fossil-free ocean transport with no emissions and no ballast water.

Dr Simon Cripps, an eminent marine scientist and director, Global Marine Programme with WWF International, based in Switzerland, says that one of the world’s last frontiers is the high seas. He also maintains that the oceans also are under attack from commercial fishing, oil and gas exploration, mining, illegal fishing, and marine pollution.

“Less than half of one per cent of seas lie within marine protected areas, and most of these are under-resourced and poorly managed, offering little in the way of real protection to marine species,” said Dr Cripps.

With regard to fishing he and his team have identified that the problem of “by-catching” – where sea creatures are caught accidentally in the massive nets and tossed away – threatens key species such as the bottlenose dolphin.

He also warns that if the present over-fishing continues, cod could disappear from the market within 15 years. The Grand Banks fishing grounds off Newfoundland in Canada, was once one of the most plentiful cod grounds that the world has known, but relentless over-fishing has meant that cod stocks have all but been exhausted in a few decades. However, there is a glimpse of hope – in the waters around Iceland and in the Barents Sea, cod stocks have recovered.

That adds up to quite a challenge for maritime industries to face such as ours, but it is one which we at Wallenius Wilhelmsen, and our owners Wilh. Wilhelmsen of Norway and Wallenius Lines of Sweden have taken to heart.

We asked ourselves what we could do to minimize our impact on the environment – emissions from our vessels into the air and into the sea.

Our drive towards lowering the sulphur content of bunker fuels is well documented, yet we are still finding it difficult to obtain consistently high quality low sulphur fuel of less than 1.5 per cent sulphur content outside Europe.

We are lobbying the oil companies to help us keep to our stringent annual target of 1.5 per cent sulphur content across our fleet of ships. If this limit is good enough for the Baltic region why is it not good enough for the remainder of the world?

Along with other carriers, we have already taken a number of important steps to reduce emissions including altering main engine fuel combustion to minimize emissions; using tin-free bottom paints on hulls; innovative methods of treating ballast water; use of ship’s double hulls; changing cooling agents used in refrigeration plant; implementation of biodegradable oil in the stern tubes; finding more environmentally friendly systems to put out fires; using bilge water treatments achieving content of five parts per million (ppm); and using biocide-free anti-foulants.

We are also members of the Clean Cargo Working Group, a global consortium of multinational manufacturers, shippers and carriers, which came together to promote cleaner and more environmentally sustainable transportation. The Clean Cargo Group is currently working on developing an Environmental Performance System (EPS) to measure exhaust emissions. This should go a long way to resolving the issue as to how customers can uniformly monitor their carriers’ emission levels and environmental profiles effectively. Wallenius Wilhelmsen is the first non-container carrier shipping to join the Group.

Streamlined trimaran. The shape provides greater stability, significantly less drag and improved utilisation of energy than conventional monohulls.	Elongated trimaran. The design focused on achieving optimum cargo capacity. Dynamic pentamaran. A stable, lightweight concept vessel with optimum cargo capacity.	Dynamic pentamaran. A stable, lightweight concept vessel with optimum cargo capacity.

Reducing the need for ballast
water is the key
Ballast water is also a key area where we believe we can help provide positive input in helping to improve the marine environment. We know that three to five billion tonnes of ballast water are transported annually by ships carrying foreign plants and animals which can disrupt the native ecology. WWF, the global conservation organization, maintains that the expulsion of vessel ballast water can really threaten the local marine habitats.

Ballast water treatment is here
Our colleagues at Wallenius Lines have been trialling a ballast water treatment system (See Footnote 1), through its subsidiary Benrad AB, which is in partnership with Alfa Laval of Sweden. The system, which will be ready this year, consists of an advanced oxidation technology (AOT) process; eliminating micro organisms, bacteria and reducing other organic materials without adding chemical substances or generating residual by-product.

While we already make considerable efforts to be “greener” with regard to emissions into the air and sea, we wanted to help preserve and promote conservation of marine life on the high seas in a more substantive way.
So in September 2004, we signed a ground-breaking three-year agreement with WWF, which aims to strengthen the work of WWF's Global Marine Programme on conservation of the high seas – areas of the open ocean outside a nation’s exclusive economic zone – and strengthen WWF-Norway’s Endangered Seas Programme. WWF is working closely with shipping and oil & gas industries to obtain optimal conservation and biodiversity protection results.


Environmentally friendly ocean transport. The E/S “Orcelle” is 50 metres longer and 18 metres wider than today’s modern car carriers and has up to 50 per cent more stowage area.

What can shipping do to help
preserve the environment?
What else can responsible shipping lines do? Well, we come from a standpoint that says that relying on low sulphur fuels to power our ships is not an ultimate goal. Reducing emissions into the sea and air is good shipping practice, but it is not the environmental Holy Grail.

Fossil fuel driven marine engines are yesterday’s technology – indeed it is the technology borne out of the 19th century. Of course, the new vessels we are introducing are up to 15 per cent more fuel efficient – that’s good for the environment and good economics. But fuel efficient ships are not a 21st century answer to working towards having a zero impact on the environment.

We reasoned we needed something more radical. Wallenius Wilhelmsen believes in a future where we can sail ships and carry our customers’ cargoes in a truly zero emission environment and we need, as responsible suppliers to our customers, to play our part in being “green”. After all, we reasoned, several of our key customers are developing and have introduced hybrid-powered vehicles which maximize fuel economy and minimize harmful emissions.

For us the goal of a zero emissions car and ro-ro carrier is not just a vision, but an innovative concept we are working towards achieving by 2025. It is borne out of a desire to do what is right for the environment and co-incidentally it makes good business sense.

Right now we are exploring alternative technologies and different sources of power to drive our ships in the future – from solar energy to wave power.

E/S “Orcelle” could make a difference
This is what lies behind the thinking of our environmentally friendly concept vessel, E/S Orcelle, which took pride of place in the Nordic pavilion at last year’s Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Powered by the sun, wind and waves, E/S Orcelle is a futuristic ship that has no conventional engines, uses no fossil fuels and releases no harmful emissions into the atmosphere or pollution into the sea and she carries no ballast water. She is intended to provide a vision of what an environmentally-friendly car and ro-ro carrier might look like in 2025.

To develop the concept vessel we brought together a multidisciplinary team of naval architects, environmental experts and industrial designers under the guidance of naval architect, Per Brinchmann, to work on a visionary design for a car carrier of the future, the E/S Orcelle (See Footnote 2).

The ship’s groundbreaking design incorporates a cargo deck area equivalent to 14 football fields. It has the capacity to carry up 10,000 cars in emission free conditions across the world’s oceans.

Concept pentamaran showing bridge, sponsons with fins and pod propulsion system. (Left: back. Right: front.)

Solar, wave and fuel cells could drive the ship of the future
Solar energy is harnessed through photovoltaic panels in the vessel’s three sails, which also help propel the vessel using wind power.

Wave power is utilized through a series of 12 fins, which will be able to transform wave energy into hydrogen, electricity or mechanical energy. The fins double as propulsion units, driven either by wave energy or other renewable energy sources onboard, while the vessel’s propulsive power will also be provided by two variable-speed electric propulsion systems known as “pods”.

Around half the energy on the E/S Orcelle will be produced by fuel cells – a rapidly developing new technology. These cells will combine hydrogen and oxygen to generate the electricity which will be used in the pod propulsion systems and the fins, while also producing electricity for other uses onboard. The only by-products from this process are water vapour and heat, Wallenius Wilhelmsen points out.

Cargo carrying capacity has also been optimized; so that this visionary design could carry around 50 per cent more than today’s car carriers – while having a similar weight in tonnage terms. This increased level of efficiency has been achieved through the use of lightweight materials, including aluminium and thermoplastic composites, and also by eliminating the need for ballast water tanks.

Wallenius Wilhelmsen proposes to completely eliminate the need to take on, and release, ballast water, by using an innovative pentamaran hull – featuring a long and slender main hull and four supporting sponsons – as well as by a pod-type electric propulsion system that dispenses with the traditional stern propeller and rudder arrangement.

E/S “Orcelle” is just the start
We view the E/S Orcelle project as the start of a longer term programme, in conjunction with our owners, which we hope will be matched by other leading carriers.

Our CEO, Nils P Dyvik, believes that the shipping industry must put more effort into developing sustainable deep sea transportation solutions. Indeed, we will be working with others to develop the technologies embodied within the concept design, so that they do become practical options for new buildings by 2025 – 20 years from now.

As we have seen the immense biodiversity of the high seas is under serious threat from a range of human activities such as deep sea fisheries, seabed mining, oil and gas extraction and shipping. So we view E/S Orcelle as just part of our overall environmental mission.

Running alongside our work on developing E/S Orcelle will be our support of WWF’s Global Marine Programme to help them secure a healthy marine environment. This they intend achieving by focusing on the conservation and wise use of the high seas. The good news is that with the financial support from Wallenius Lines, WWF has been able to work on exploring the existing legal avenues and opportunities available to establish High Seas Marine Protected Areas (HSMPAs).

WWL is working with WWF
at all levels

Ocean transport of tomorrow. The E/S “Orcelle” concept vessel is a pentamaran that utilises sun, wind and wave energy and fuel cell technology.

In Canada, WWF is establishing a legal framework for a marine protected area around the Grand Banks in Canada.

At the UN WWF is co-operating with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, to push for a UN General Assembly resolution to temporarily ban bottom trawling on the high seas until appropriate governance arrangements and management measures have been developed to allow effective control of high seas fishing. The work at the UN has been complemented by work with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group of 30 countries on tackling illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. The WWF has made influential contributions to the work of the task force tackling this issue.

Thanks to Wallenius Wilhelmsen’s financial support, WWF-Norway has been able to employ a new marine officer, working on shipping and oil and gas issues. Thanks to this new position within its existing Marine Team, WWF-Norway is working closely with shipping and oil & gas industries to obtain optimal conservation and biodiversity protection results.

WWF-Norway was an observer at the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission meeting in November 2004, where a proposal by Norway was adopted, to protect five areas in international waters from all fishing activities that could harm cold-water corals and deep sea fish species.

A proposal for designating marine protected areas in Norwegian waters was proposed earlier last year and WWF-Norway has contributed to the development of two new laws affecting the marine environment in Norway, by promoting the ecosystem approach, advocated by WWF as a way to manage all human activities that affect the ocean.

As part of the on-going work on the management plan for the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea, the Norwegian government has carried out an impact assessment of shipping in the area.

WWF has provided detailed input into the assessment, urging for ship’s routing systems, better oil spill response plans, Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSA) and national ballast water guidelines. WWF commented on and was instrumental in keeping the definition of PSSA in the new government strategy on maritime security.

WWF-Norway and the WWF-Barents Sea Programme have also developed a new and improved science-based methodology to identify particularly sensitive areas where petroleum activities should not be allowed. WWF-Norway is now using the results to identify candidate areas for petroleum-free zones in the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea. This formed the basis for a campaign for no-go areas which was launched at the end of last year.

So a lot has already been achieved. But a great deal still need to be accomplished. Wallenius Wilhelmsen’s environmental goal is simple. We want to be one of the most environmental friendly companies on the planet. Achieving this is not so simple, but by working closely with our environmental partners, WWF, and supporting the work they do, and finding innovative solutions to minimize our impact on the environment we will accomplish our mission. Pursuing such goals is good for the planet and great for business.

Footnotes:
1. Benrad and Alfa Laval won the environment category of the prestigious Seatrade 2005 Awards and Wallenius Wilhelmsen was granted a special commendation for our environmental stance.
2. E/S stands for Environmentally Sound Ship. The ship is named after the Irrawaddy dolphin, which is also known as in French as the Orcelle dolphin. WWF, the global conservation organization, includes the Orcelle dolphin among the world’s critically endangered species.