The shipping industry has made much of its “net zero” target by the middle of the century, but at the moment things are getting worse, not better. The Houthi attacks on ships in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Arabia has led many vessel owners and operators to divert vessels from the Suez route to one that lengthens the ship’s journey by several thousand miles, around the Cape of Good Hope.
That detour that adds not just a week (at least) to the journey from Asia and Europe, but the extra fuel burned has seen an extra 13.6m tons of CO2 emissions over the past four months — equivalent to the pollution of about 9m-plus cars over that same period*, according to a report from consultancy INVERTO, a subsidiary of Boston Consulting Group Inc.
“The extra emissions resulting from this crisis will increase companies’ carbon footprints – making it very hard to hit their net zero targets,” said Sushank Agarwal, a managing director at the company. “To meet these targets, companies will either need to reduce emissions elsewhere in their supply chains or invest in more carbon offset initiatives; both can be very costly.”
Emily Stausbøll, a market analyst at Oslo-based freight-analytics company Xeneta, also noted that “ships are being sailed at higher speeds in an attempt to make up time due to the longer distances, which again results in more carbon being burned”. This assertion was backed up by data from Clarksons, which found that the average speed of the world’s largest container ships increased from less than 15 knots to more than 16 knots after the Red Sea attacks intensified and mass shipping diversions began in mid-December. Also, when there is a tight tanker market it makes economic sense to increase average speeds.
*The 9m cars calculation is based on a US Environmental Protection Agency estimate for a typical passenger vehicle.
