Global shipping in ‘historic’ climate deal

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The global shipping industry has for the first time agreed to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases. The move comes after talks in April at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) headquarters in London.

Shipping has previously been excluded from climate agreements, but under the new climate deal, emissions will be reduced by 50% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels.

One minister from a Pacific island state described the agreement as “history in the making”.

Shipping generates roughly the same quantity of greenhouse gases as Germany and, if it were accounted for as a nation, would rank as the world’s 6th biggest emitter.

Like aviation, it had been excluded from climate negotiations because it is an international activity while both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement involved national pledges to reduce greenhouse gases.

The United States, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and a few other countries had not wanted to set a target for cutting shipping emissions at all.

By contrast the European Union had pushed for a cut of 70-100%.

So the deal for a 50% reduction is a compromise which some argue is unrealistic while others say does not go far enough.

Kitack Lim, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, who had chaired the controversial talks, said: “This initial strategy is not a final statement but a key starting point.”

The tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands had opened the conference with a plea for action. Although it has the world’s second largest register of shipping, it had warned that failure to achieve deep cuts would threaten the country’s survival, as global warming raises sea levels.

As the talks concluded, the nation’s environment minister David Paul said: “To get to this point has been hard, very hard. And it has involved compromises by all countries. Not least by vulnerable island nations like my own who wanted something, far, far more ambitious than this one.”

Mr Paul added: “This is history in the making… if a country like the Marshall Islands, a country that is very vulnerable to climate change, and particularly depends on international shipping, can endorse this deal, there is no credible excuse for anybody else to hold back.”

Laurent Parente, the ambassador of Vanuatu, also a Pacific island nation, was not satisfied but hoped the deal would lead to tougher action in future. “It is the best we could do and is therefore what this delegation will support as the initial strategy that we have no doubt will evolve to higher ambitions in the near future.”

By contrast, the head of the US delegation to the talks, Jeffrey Lantz, made clear his country’s opposition to the deal. “We do not support the establishment of an absolute reduction target at this time,” he said. “In addition, we note that achieving significant emissions reductions, in the international shipping sector, would depend on technological innovation and further improvements in energy efficiency.” Mr Lantz reiterated that the US, under President Trump, has announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change. He also criticised the way the IMO had handled the talks, describing it as “unacceptable and not befitting this esteemed organisation.”

But a clear majority of the conference was in favour of action.

The UK’s shipping minister, Nusrat Ghani, described the agreement as ” a watershed moment with the industry showing it is willing to play its part in protecting the planet”.

The move will send a signal through the industry that rapid innovation is now needed. Ships may have to operate more slowly to burn less fuel. New designs for vessels will be streamlined and engines will have to be cleaner, maybe powered by hydrogen or batteries, or even by the wind.

Author: David Shukman, BBC Science Editor

Source: BBC News

The port of Civitavecchia to host the new Italian headquarters of the Escola Europea

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The port of Civitavecchia, headquarters of the Port Authority of Centre-North Tyrrhenian Sea in Italy, will now also be the host of the Italian headquarters of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport.

The decision was approved at the Steering Committee meeting of the European training centre that took place on the 12th of April at the facilities of the Italian port.

Representatives of the Escola’s partners attended the meeting, which included: Francesco Maria di Majo, president of the host port; Sixte Cambra, president of the Port of Barcelona and of the Escola Europea; Paolo Emilio Signorini, counterpart of the Port Authority of the Western Liguria Sea (ports of Genoa); Guido Grimaldi, Commercial Director of the Grimaldi Group; and Antonio Pedevilla, Director of Operations of GNV. During the gathering the Escola’s activities carried out in 2017 were approved, and the projects in which the Escola is involved in a formative as well as in a communication capacity were explained. Likewise, the planned initiatives and courses for 2018 were summarised.

The president of the Escola Europea, Sixte Cambra, opened the meeting by sharing the magnificent results of the past year. 36 courses were carried out that counted with the participation of 1,300 participants, representing an increase of 50% in the number of courses and 47% in the number of participants compared to 2016. Thirty-eight technical workshops were held on port terminals (with 1,430 participants), showing a further 25% increase over the previous year. In total, the Escola’s team carried out 74 training activities, with 2,730 students from 46 countries and with the participation of 35 training centres. 75% of the students came from Europe, 20% from America and 5% from Africa.

56% of the activities were conducted in languages other than Spanish, and for the first time one of the courses took place beyond European borders, in Morocco.

More data: 54% of the participants were professionals or students of current university degrees and post-graduates and / or linked to companies in the transport sector.

Finally, the quality of the courses was rated more than satisfactory: an average of 4.39 out of 5 was rated by the course participants, demonstrating excellence in training and experience. This certifies that the teachers, the organization and the means made available to the students were more than adequate to meet the expectations of the students.

During the meeting, the Escola team presented the TransLogMED project, labelled by the Union for the Mediterranean and approved by the European Commission and the countries that make up this organization. The project aims to promote regional integration across the Mediterranean by favouring and facilitating the development of the Motorways of the Sea and the creation of jobs in the transport and logistics sector, offering specialized and quality professional training. TransLogMED plans to organize more than 30 activities, including courses and seminars, with an approximate scope of one thousand professionals from the sector coming from Italy, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Jordan.

Forma’t al Port fills the Escola’s classrooms in the first quarter of 2018

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Three hundred and sixty students of higher education courses from thirteen Catalan institutes have filled the classrooms of the Escola Europea during the seven Introduction courses of the Forma’t al Port project organized so far this year.

The participating institutes were: The UAB Foundation (Fundación UAB), the Centre for Polytechnic Studies; Sant Francesc, Prat and López Vicuña Centres for Studies; La Salle Gràcia, Les Salines, Jaume Mimó, Poblenou, Lluïsa Cura, Estela Ibèrica and  Joan Brossa Institutes as well as the Escola del Treball from Lleida.

The main objective of the two-day-long Introduction course is to supply upper cycle first-year students of International Trade and Transport and Logistics with a first-hand experience of the Port of Barcelona, its infrastructures, logistical equipment and port operations. In addition, the companies of port community have the opportunity to promote their activities and the professional profiles they seek for their work force. Finally, the course creates a space for dialogue to encourage exchanges between training centres and companies, and thus promote the hiring of students in programmes of dual training.

Introduction characterises the first level of the Forma’t al Port programme and is considered preparatory for the more complex three-day-long Management course, during which participants receive training on board of one of the vessels that covers the regular short sea shipping route between Barcelona (Spain) and Genoa (Italy).

The Forma’t al Port project was launched in 2014 in Barcelona by the Port of Barcelona, Barcelona-Catalunya Logistics Centre, the Barcelona Provincial Council (la Diputació de Barcelona) and the Escola Europea. The first triennium of activities took place between 2015-2017 and had a great drawing power, giving very positive results. This paved the way for a new triennium 2018-2020, which welcomes back the centres already loyal to the programme alongside the addition of new institutes.

For more information, you can visit the website of the project: https://escolaeuropea.eu/training/our-courses/#format.

European ports support community plans to reduce emissions in maritime transport

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Port facilities, coastal cities and their local communities are among the groups most vulnerable to extreme climatic conditions resulting from global warming.

The International Maritime Organization, IMO, will adopt its initial strategy for the reduction of greenhouse gases during the month of April in the Committee for the Protection of the Marine Environment. For this purpose, the setting of a limit for the reduction of CO2 emissions in the short term and other measures in the medium and long term will be discussed.

Once adopted, this strategy will be combined with other national measures to test their effectiveness and alignment with the objectives of the Paris Agreement to combat global warming.

This is required by the European Union, which has recently agreed on its position on these negotiations and has the support of the European Sea Ports Organisation  (ESPO). In this sense, they expect their opinions to be taken into account in the negotiation as a constructive contribution.

Under the Paris Agreement, all countries and economic sectors must initiate immediate actions to maintain the temperature rise below 2 °C, although ports, coastal cities and their local communities are among the groups most vulnerable to theclimatic extreme conditions that result from global warming.

Both the measures proposed by Brussels and by the EU countries to achieve this goal require ports to reduce the carbon footprint of their terrestrial activities. In parallel, European ports aim to achieve the decarbonisation of maritime transport through a range of sustainable services.

In this line, the European Directive for the infrastructure of alternative fuels determines that the ports of the TEN-T network should by 2025 have adequate facilities for the bunkering and supply of LNG fuel by means of power supplies in their enclosures.

Source: Cadena de Suministro

Spain and France advance the road map to implement the railway motorways

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Companies that choose to operate in the Mediterranean and Atlantic corridors have until July 16 to submit their bids.

The Spanish Minister of Development, Iñigo de la Serna, and the French Minister of Transport, Elisabeth Borne, have celebrated the publication of the two calls for proposals of common interest concerning the establishment of railway motorway services (ferroutage) along the Atlantic and Mediterranean axes.
These expressions of interest are a continuation of those made in 2017 and are aimed at the manufacturers of rolling stock, within the framework of the roadmap approved by the Spanish-French work group on railway motorways, to identify the technical solutions that will allow the transport of road semi-trailers by rail.

This publication confirms the commitment of Spain and France to discuss the development of the two corridors, to favor the modal shift, and to establish and reinforce these alternative services to the transport of goods by road.

These consultancies refer to the itineraries that connect the Northwest (Vitoria) and the East of Spain (Valencia-Murcia) with the North and the East of France (Calais / Lille / Metz) or even further: via Irún, Bordeaux and Paris on the Atlantic Corridor, on the one hand; and via Barcelona, Avignon and Lyon along the Mediterranean Corridor, on the other. Both axes can allow a service with Ile-de-France.

These calls for expressions of interest are aimed at stimulating the initiatives of industrial actors “by providing answers and operational solutions for these services”. Interested companies have until July 16, 2018 to submit their offers.

The report prepared by the two States, which is incorporated into the current consultations, specifies the characteristics and functionalities of the materials proposed by the five designers and manufacturers who responded to the consultation. “The development of truck transport services by rail is an essential element for improving the sustainability of freight transport, according to a joint publication of both ministries, which is one of the priorities of the two States brought forth by the significant volume of traffic of trucks along the two corridors, on the borders of Perthus and Biriatou. “

On the other hand, the two countries welcome the support of their initiative on behalf of the European Union, especially along the Atlantic axis, with the financial support of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). Finally, the ministers agree that “this joint positioning on the railway motorways is in full consonance with the desire to intensify the Franco-Spanish cooperation in the field of transport of freight, promoting the use of environmentally friendly solutions. It is also an illustration of the governments’ conviction that rail freight, especially along these main corridors, is a solution for the future.”

Source: El Vigia

The Escola’s first Summer School on Port Operations to take place in Barcelona

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Between the 9th and the 13th of July 2018 the Escola Europea will run the first ever edition of the Summer School focusing on Port Operations. This unique and novel programme will bring the course participants close to the activities carried out in the Port of Barcelona, by offering a thorough analysis of the operations involved and including a practical study of companies, their employees and their facilities.

Alongside practical workshops to different sites across the Catalan enclave, including visits to the Pilot Control Tower, the Border Inspection Post, Tugs facilities, etc, the participants will discover the theories behind the port community and port operations from the perspectives of terminals, cargo and agents; learn about services offered to visiting vessels; discover port security protocols; understand risk management of  dangerous goods and emergencies; find out about infrastructure and the functionalities of the Border Inspection Post; consider the environmental aspects of management of the port area and start to consider qualities of a future port.

The Summer School will be open for anyone to attend, but it will especially benefit students of port management, nautical and maritime transport, transport management and logistics; early or mid-career ship and port agents wishing to develop their knowledge; shipping company personnel wishing to understand the work of the agent; and port terminal personnel wishing to understand how port operations and services work.

The teaching staff will comprise experts in intermodal maritime logistics active within the local community, professionals from the Port of Barcelona, and representatives from the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport. It will be a week not to be missed!

For more information you can consult the course page: https://escolaeuropea.eu/courses/port-operations/

Report: LNG Comparable to Other Fossil Fuels

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There is no widely available fuel, including LNG, to manage climate change and local pollutants in tandem, according to a recent study by researchers at The University of Manchester.

The researchers carried out a life cycle assessment of current and future fuels used by the shipping companies to quantify their environmental impacts. The alternative fuels assessed in the study were LNG, methanol, liquid hydrogen, biodiesel, straight vegetable oil and bio-LNG. They measured the impacts of local pollutants (sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter) and greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide).

Fuels can incur the release of emissions at various stages of their life-cycle, for example during refining or transportation, or during the cultivation of the fuel if it is bio-derived. The latter may have impacts associated with cultivation, land-use change and agricultural inputs such as fertilizers. Although the upstream emissions are not attributed to the shipping sector, it is essential to ensure wider implications of fuel switches are accounted for, say the researchers. Failure to take upstream emissions into account in any sectoral assessment risks locking in carbon intensive solutions.

Dr Paul Gilbert, Senior Lecturer in Climate Change Mitigation, said: “In particular, LNG is a promising option for meeting existing regulation, but it is not a low greenhouse gas emissions fuel.

“To understand the full extent of the environmental implications it is important to consider the emissions released over the full life-cycle and not just during fuel combustion. Otherwise, there is a risk of misleading the industry and policy on the true emission penalties of any alternative fuels.”

The two conventional fossil fuels and LNG produce comparable baseline greenhouse gas emissions. When taking into account non-CO2 emissions, any reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2e are negligible for LNG, states the study. The main life-cycle hot-spots include liquefaction efficiency; extent of venting and flaring; and methane slip – the unintended release of methane during ship operation.

Even under idealized conditions, reductions of CO2 emissions are strictly limited. Bio-LNG produced from agricultural waste is an exception. The results show that it has the potential to cut CO2 emissions significantly. However, feedstock is limited.

The figure (sourced from the Journal of Cleaner Production) shows lifecycle emissions in terms of carbon dioxide equivalents, distinguishing between upstream and operational emissions.

The study says effort needs to be directed at overcoming barriers to exploiting the identified low carbon potential of fuels or finding alternatives. Gilbert said it is important to ensure that any short-term measure doesn’t diminish the potential roll-out of low carbon fuels, in particular when taking into account the long life times of ships and fuel supply infrastructure.

Source: Maritime Executive 

Port-railway connections remain key for the development of rail transport

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The third month of the year saw the beginning of new railway connections in Spanish ports and the start-up of different projects linked to intermodality, while the works of the Mediterranean Corridor continue to advance.

The month of March has brought very good news for Renfe, which in 2017 achieved net profits for the first time without taking extraordinary income into account (specifically, 70 million euros). In addition, after receiving the PQQ pre-qualification passport, it can now participate in the railway competitions in the United Kingdom, which currently has the most competitive and liberalized rail market in Europe.

Its merchandise division has managed to balance its EBITDA to a negative figure of 0.9 million euros, 7.71 million more than in 2016. However, its traffic has shown a decrease of 5% in the first months of 2018, especially due to the fall in metric width movements.

On the other hand, Spanish ports continue to maintain their commitment to rail connections. In the third month of the year the first direct service for the transport of vehicles from Germany was started, operated by DB Cargo, sharing the leading role with the Medway line between the ports of Seville (Spain) and Sines (Portugal), with a capacity of of more than 100 TEUs per trip.

In addition, the Port Authority of Cartagena has given the green light at the beginning of the record for the improvement of the Escombreras railway terminal, and the fourth weekly intermodal rail service between the Intermodal Terminal of Navarra, located in Noáin, and the BEST terminal in the Port of Barcelona has been launched.

Intermodal terminals and the Mediterranean Corridor

In this context, it is necessary to point out that the Navarrese administration plans to promote the intermodal nodes of Noáin-Imárcoain and Tudela-Castejón within the framework of its logistics strategy 2018-2028, while Spanish Ministry of Development (Fomento) and the Junta de Extremadura will work on the development of three new intermodal freight terminals in Cáceres and Badajoz.

Likewise, work has begun on installing the first section of the 750-meter lane of the three branches that the Miranda Container Terminal will have in Burgos, at the initiative of JSV Logistic. Cimalsa is immersed in a project to promote intermodality in the cross-border transport of goods between France and Catalonia.

Regarding the connections with France, another issue that has continued to be debated in March is the reopening of Canfranc, which would boost the traffic of the Maritime Terminal of Zaragoza, with a total movement of 180,000 containers per year.

In March, the development of the Mediterranean Corridor has also advanced, since Adif has been awarded the contract for the project to connect in the standard width the multimodal platform of La Llagosta, in Barcelona, with this infrastructure.

Nevertheless, in the south of Spain a demand to boost this section of the corridor, with the same benefits for the coastal branch as for the interior, meaning a double platform across its entirety from the French border all the way to Andalusia.

Source: Cadena de Suministro

The Port of Barcelona promotes the World Ports Sustainability Program through three projects

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The purpose of the WPSP is to promote the sustainability of the port logistics chain.

The Port of Barcelona is one of the promoters of the World Ports Sustainability Program (WPSP), a project whose objective is to promote sustainability in ports and in all logistics chains. The WPSP wants to gather, coordinate and promote the different sustainability initiatives that are being developed in ports around the world, helping them respond to the needs of the communities they serve and, at the same time, tackle the great global challenges, such as climate change, mobility, digitalization, migration and social integration.

The WPSP, which was presented at the conference of the same title held last week in the port of Antwerp, inaugurated by Queen Mathilde of Belgium – one of the 17 defenders of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – is a initiative of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH), which presides over the port of Barcelona, and is a continuation of the World Ports Climate Declaration, signed by 55 of the world’s major ports ten years ago. The conference was attended by the Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Kitack Lim, who has expressed the support of the world’s leading maritime organization to the WPSP.

In addition to the IAPH, the main international port and transport organizations have been added to the initiative, including the European Ports Association (ESPO), the Association of Port Authorities of America (AAPA), and the International Association of Cities and Ports (AIVP).

At the launch conference of the WPSP, the deputy general director of Strategy and Commerce of the port of Barcelona and president of IAPH, Santiago Garcia-Milà, has highlighted the ability of “the global port community to contribute to the objectives of the United Nations in important aspects such as energy and education “, and has defended that” the cooperation between the different actors of the international maritime business gives enormous potential to this initiative “.

The Catalan port participates in the WPSP with three of its own projects. The first, the Study of the Impact of Cruise Activity in Barcelona. The second, the Air Quality Improvement Plan of the Port of Barcelona, which aims to reduce polluting emissions through 25 actions developed in 53 activities. Many of these are already being developed and are based, to a large extent, on the promotion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as an alternative fuel for ships, terminal machinery and trucks. Finally, Links Port, the web tool to build and compare online transport chains to import or export a container between any port in the world and Europe through Barcelona, which includes a model for calculating emissions.

Source: El Vigia

Escola Europea promotes Formati al Porto in Italy

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On the 26th of March 2018 the director of the Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport, Eduard Rodés travelled to the Lazio region of Italy to meet Mr Marco Ciarlantini, the head of the director’s secretariat of the regional directorate for training, research and innovation (Scuola Università, Diritto allo Studio – Regione Lazio). The meeting was also attended by Giovanni Marinucci (ADSP Mar Tirreno Centro Settentrionale) and Andrea Campagna, consultant at the Research Centre for Transport and Logistics – CTL  and Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’. During the talks possibilities of future collaborations as well as of governmental co-financing were discussed.

The Formati Al Porto project will have a triennial structure and will be aimed at university students (Transport and Territory Engineering, Circular Economy, Tourism) as well as higher technical institutes (area 2: Sustainable Mobility) students. For more details about the Italian education system, please visit https://www.ceebd.co.uk/study-in-italy/).

The main aim of the initiative is to have the students get in touch with the port community and activities and learn directly from the sources the characteristics of the professions linked to the port businesses. They will have a first-hand experience of infrastructures, facilities and operations. Moreover, the project will improve the alignment between the qualifications requested by the companies and the competences offered by the education system.

The Escola Europea has already acquired some expertise with this kind of programmes. The Forma’t Al port project was launched in 2014 in Barcelona. The initiative was a success and after the first triennium the agreements with sponsors and partners were renewed in early 2018 for three more years with more educating centres willing to participate.

The Formati Al Porto pilot course is scheduled for the end of 2018.