TPT January 2020

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

The global c l imate Maritime – A call to collaborative action: zero-emission shipping by 2030 The oceans have long provided partial protection from the effects of climate change, said to absorb up to 93 per cent of heat trapped by rising greenhouse gas emissions and taking up 30 per cent of carbon emissions. New research from the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy suggests the ocean can provide what is described by the World Resources Institute as “a source of innovation and hope in the climate change fight”. The High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy is a group of 14 presidents and prime ministers from around the globe, committed to “developing, catalysing and supporting solutions for ocean health and wealth in policy, governance, technology and finance”. The group’s report, “The Ocean as a Solution for Climate Change: Five Opportunities for Action”, was published at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in New York. It believes that ocean-based climate action could deliver up to a fifth of the annual greenhouse gas emissions cuts needed by 2050 to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. The Maritime Journal reports that, in response, over 70 organisations are supporting an alliance that aims to achieve the complete decarbonisation of shipping by 2030, with commercially viable zero-emission vessels, powered by zero-emission fuels, operating on deep sea trade routes by 2030. The ambitions of the Getting to Zero Coalition, a partnership between the Global Maritime Forum, the Friends of Ocean Action, and the World Economic Forum, are closely aligned with the UN International Maritime Organization’s initial greenhouse gas strategy. Claiming the support of shipping enterprises that include Maersk, Ocean Network Express, Shell, the China Navigation Company, the Port of Rotterdam, Kuehne + Nagel, and the American Bureau of Shipping, as well as multiple banks, the alliance is urging countries to cooperate on five ocean- based climate actions to support the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “To take the next big step change towards decarbonisation of shipping, a shift in propulsion technologies or a shift to clean fuels is required which implies close collaboration from all parties,” said Søren Skou, CEO of AP Møller Mærsk, adding that the coalition is “a crucial vehicle to make this collaboration happen.” The High Level Panel is calling for developments in ocean- based renewable energy, the decarbonising of ocean industries, securing sustainable food for the future, advancing the deployment of carbon capture and storage, and expanding ocean observation and research.

Automot i ve Manufacturers are prepared to share exper tise and expenses

Volkswagen AG is said to be in talks with fellow manufacturers with a view to sharing its PPE platform, the technology being developed as the basis for purely battery-powered Porsche and Audi models. At a press briefing in Munich, Ulrich Widmann, head of development at Audi for the joint engineering project, confirmed: “There’s definitely interest. Sharing technology to generate scale effects is the only way to achieve the turnaround in electric cars, both economically and ecologically.” Information sharing already exists with Ford Motor Co who had agreed to use VW’s main electric car platform for a high volume car in Europe. The pact is expected to be worth between $10 bn and $20 bn over six years with the possibility of a second model based on VW technology. Audi plans to launch 30 battery-powered cars by 2025, 20 of which will be fully electric. Following the delayed start of Audi’s E-Tron, the manufacturer will use the Porsche Taycan’s J1 platform to introduce a high performance E-Tron GT late in 2020. Audi’s Q4 E-Tron will be based on a further different platform, the MEB, and will be produced from 2021. In the meantime, Audi’s industrial challenges include reversing its declining sales figures, and concluding negotiations with labour unions over cost cutting and the location of future car production. Electric vehicles in India – which comes first? India, a country with around 150 million drivers, is the fourth largest automotive market, but makers of electric vehicles are finding it a hard market to penetrate despite government support for all-electric cars. The cause for the slow take up is partly cost. Hyundai Motor Co’s Kona, the first electric SUV in India, carries a price tag of $35,000. No surprise then, that during August only 130 were sold. The average annual salary in India is around $2,000. Vinkesh Gulati, vice president of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations, believes the interest in, and excitement for, electric vehicles exists, but “that stops the moment we tell them the price”. But the problem is not just cost, it’s infrastructure. The research organisation BloombergNEF estimates that in 2018, India had 650 EV charging stations: China, the largest market for EVs, had 456,000. India has a huge potential for growth in vehicle sales – there are only 27 cars for every 1,000 Indians, compared with 570 cars for every 1,000 Germans – but government officials and EV-component makers can not agree on whether to create an adequate charging infrastructure to promote sales or to wait until the number of EVs on the roads can justify the outlay. Gill Watson Features Editor (Europe)

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JANUARY 2020