In my last blog I referred to IMO’s decree that all vessels must reduce their CO2 emissions per capacity-mile by at least 40% by 2030 and low emissions in ports and the fact that such actions are now referred to as decarbonisation.
Regular readers and Solar Solve stakeholders will all be aware that our company has been promoting BE GREEN as a policy for more than a decade, with a whole website page dedicated to it.
Towards the end of last year, when drawing up a new PROJECTS FOR 2020 list we decided that as well as promoting BE GREEN policies or what is now being referred to as DECARBONISATION, to everyone else, we need to investigate what else we can be doing internally to help the situation.
With the right frame of mind and some determination to find something, it doesn’t take long for a list to start growing and we now have a number of decarbonisation ideas and projects lined up for 2020.
Some of our current processes and procedures can be improved or eliminated as contributors to air pollution. We have identified them and are putting plans into place to address them this year.
Some we have identified as ‘possibly being unfriendly’ but we do not have enough information at this time to be sure they are. We are looking at what actions we could take to change them but do not want to if the alternative remedies will be equally unfriendly. The logic behind this decision is based on the biomass arguments (USING WOOD PELLETS TO GENERATE LOW-CARBON ELECTRICITY IS A FLAWED POLICY THAT IS SPEEDING UP NOT SLOWING DOWN CLIMATE WARMING. That’s according to a new study which says wood is not carbon neutral and emissions from pellets are higher than coal. Subsidies for biomass should be immediately reviewed, the author says. But the industry rejected the report saying that wood energy cuts carbon significantly compared to fossil fuels. More details on this controversial subject can be read here.
The last thing we want to be doing is making changes for the sake of it, when there is no benefit for to the environment or for Solar Solve or our stakeholders.
We expect a lot of changes will be forced onto us and for most of them we are waiting to see what they are and if some alternative is proposed, rather than us just going ahead and doing something that may not be as good as a later, specially developed solution. We do not consider this philosophy to be an ‘ostrich – head stuck in the sand policy’ but a common sense attitude to take advantage of alternative methods that will utilise new, future technology, whatever it may be and whenever it might happen.
However, there are obvious changes that we can implement this year and we are looking forward to ‘doing our bit’ at DECARBONISING.
JHL MBE SSL Co. Chairman
