Shipping: part of the carbon solution
Shipping is the most carbon-efficient means of transporting freight. Modern ships can emit as little as five grams of CO2 per tonne-kilometre – compared to about 50 grams per tonne-kilometre for a heavy truck or 540 grams per tonne-kilometre for a modern cargo plane. Any shift of freight from other modes of transport to shipping will therefore reduce overall emissions.
Fuel efficiency – and therefore CO2-efficiency – has improved dramatically over recent decades due to both improvements in ship design and technological advances. Ships are also getting bigger, allowing them to enjoy economies of scale. A modern container ship emits about a quarter of the CO2 that a container ship did in the 1970s – while carrying up to 10 times as many containers. The largest container ships can now carry some 13,000 twenty foot containers.
The UK is at the forefront of developments to reduce the shipping industry’s environmental footprint – UK ships are the some of the cleanest, greenest, most high-tech vessels in the world.
However, the nature of the shipping industry means that CO2 reductions cannot be gained by simply reducing the scale of its operations. Shipping carries 80% of world and 92% of UK trade. Clearly unless we are willing to accept a slowdown in the economy, a significant decline in our standard of living – and perhaps even rationing of essential supplies such as food, clothes and petrol – an improvement in shipping’s carbon footprint can’t be achieved by simply reducing the number of ships or the number of voyages.
Shipping demand is a direct function of the demand of world trade. As trade grows – and the trend has been and continues to be upward – so too will carbon emissions from the carrier of world trade: shipping. There are only two ways to reduce trade carried by ship – reduce world trade or transfer the freight to another, less carbon-efficient, mode of transport.
For the UK, a small country with a high population density and the fifth largest trading economy in the world, the simple truth is that the country doesn’t have the capacity to sustain its population – even at a subsistence level – without imports. We could use our cars less often, take fewer flights or switch to low wattage light bulbs – but could we do without food, heating or clothing?