Luis Guerrero has been, for just over a month, the new president of the Association of Naval and Oceanic Engineers of Spain (AINE). Guerrero, who has accumulated more than 38 years in the sector, replaces the until now president, Diego Fernández. From his office, he speaks with NAUCHERglobal with the aim of explaining all the challenges that lie ahead.
The first thing I wanted to ask you is how do you remember the day you were elected and above all, how did you experience it?
The day I was elected I was in Peru at the Ibero-American Congress of Naval Engineering and it was a very opportune moment to inform the authorities present there, that I had been elected president of the Spanish Association of Naval Engineering. There was another candidate but I more or less expected it and that’s it, to face it as one more responsibility that one has at this age.
I have read in different articles that at the time of your election you had a triple challenge ahead: the decarbonization of maritime transport, cybersecurity, and the installation of renewable energy generation plants at sea. But this triple challenge, can we also mark it as the main objective of Luis Guerrero in his term?
The first major objective is to use all the potential of the Association of Naval Engineers, also including the other professions of the maritime sector. Although we naval engineers are the best organized, we have to rely on the rest of the institutions to continue improving the Spanish Maritime System. This would be the major objective, but to achieve it we have to get all naval engineers involved, the rest of the professions, and involve the youth because now the attachment, tradition, or roots that existed decades ago has been lost, when you left university and quickly joined the association. Young people today are more individualistic and do not see the need to support institutions, nor their role within the association and that must be a bit our task, to make them see what their role is within the association so that they want to get involved.
I am left with this last aspect of the role of young people. In these first days of your term, has anything already been done or do you have something planned to attract them a little as soon as they leave university?
What we are doing, even before I arrived at the presidency, is making a dissemination plan in the different schools of engineering, not only in the one in Madrid, because we have to communicate everything we want to promote to these schools. We have to go there and explain everything we do and the number of things that an association moves for the benefit of the profession and for the benefit of the maritime sector in general.
The association has broader aspects to offer than the college and we have to manage to develop these things with the young people.
I must admit that there were some activities of the association that I was unaware of and now that I am getting to know them, the truth is that we have a magnificent number of things and all with very limited staff.
That is to say, it’s not so much about not doing things, but rather that they have to be made known
Indeed, bring these activities closer to the young people so that they can get to know them and so that when they reach a certain age they can take on this responsibility beyond just earning a salary.
You also mentioned at the beginning that there was another candidate, about seeking that unity, not only with the entire maritime sector, but also within the engineers themselves, in these first days, weeks that you have been in the position, have you noticed any change?
We came in with the idea of giving continuity to the previous team, although in this short time we have also made our own decisions, acting differently from the previous team, but nothing different from what usually happens in these cases.
The last two and I’ll finish. To achieve that unity in the entire maritime sector, beyond the engineers themselves, do you see it as frankly difficult?
For the Association of Naval Engineers I want to think that it will not be very difficult because our mission is not corporate, our mission is not like that of the College of Naval Engineers which has its discussions with the Official College of the Merchant Navy, with the Civil Engineers, with communications engineers… We want something else. What we want is to develop the profession of naval engineer, but in this development other professionals are involved; for that reason it should not be difficult. It is true that we have very consolidated institutions that work very well and that is what we make available to others.
The last one is a bit more generic, because this 2030 horizon is spoken of as the year of decarbonization. Is everything possible being done to make ships more sustainable or ecological… If we had to take a general snapshot, how do you see the near future regarding navigation, the maritime system in general
Regarding the issue of decarbonization, at the last IMO meeting it was decided to delay the decisions by one year and of course in the case of a shipowner, delaying the decisions by one year means delaying by one year the choice of which fuel to use for a ship or whether to decide or not to build or to wait, it is quite uncertain. The landscape, I believe, is entering a one-year waiting period. My opinion is that in the end the industry is preparing. I was recently at a conference on renewable ammonia as a marine fuel and I was surprised by the number of people there and the interest that existed.
Despite this halt by the IMO, I believe that the issue of decarbonization has to arrive sooner because it is a problem for humanity, not for maritime transport. Humanity agrees that greenhouse gases must be reduced, so we will have to reduce carbon emissions. I know that the industry is working well, that shipowners are willing to make the investments they have to make but within a stable framework and it is also necessary for shipowners to receive the aid that was planned, which for now, as far as I know, the aid has not yet come from the shipping companies and that is important.
