Mr John Platsidakis, speaking at an INTERCARGO event in London posed the question: “Are we managing ships or are we managing regulations?”
We are delighted that Mr Platsidakis will be joining our Slide2Open Shipping Finance Conference on January 24th, 2019, to share his insight about an industry that is striving to be a responsible corporate citizen worldwide, but an industry that often gets entangled in an international web of fragmented and compartmentalized “regulation logic”.
New regulations in the past few years have aimed at reducing the shipping industry’s impact on the environment; recent examples have been first the mandating of ballast water management systems a few years ago, and recently the imposition of the IMO2020 regulation for lower emissions.
Both the shipping industry as a whole and each individual stakeholder are strongly in favor of minimizing pollution and preserving a pristine environment and clean seas. But it sometimes seems that regulations are pushed for feel-good headlines, without always ensuring that they are indeed serving the precious environment and not just pleasing the ego of some “bureaucracy”. Let’s not forget that ballast water management systems were not approved by all jurisdictions until almost after the official deadline; in other words, first the deadlines were imposed, and then (certain) authorities approved the technology almost at the deadline, causing a head-scratching implementation of the regulation, a headache that ensues even today, more than two years later.
Similarly, IMO2020 for low emissions has been pushed while it’s still uncertain that refineries worldwide are geared for producing sufficient quantities of low sulfur fuel, a consideration that could turn the regulation on its head. And, for the shipowners opting for scrubbers, a case can be made that scrubbers just redirect acidic gases from getting emitted in the air to be emitted in the sea…thus, are we sure that the overall impact on the environment is being optimized?
The shipping industry often gets accused for not being an environment-friendly industry. It is estimated that the shipping industry generates more than one billion tons of greenhouse emissions every year – a tremendous number to comprehend.
But again, who would have guessed that a picture-perfect industry like the fashion industry generates 160% more greenhouse emissions than shipping?
Sources: Slide2Open Shipping Finance Conference
Please Contact Us at：
admin@xindemarine.com
.gif)
