Describe about the Enhancing the Efficiency Of the Port Of Tilbury Through Sustainable Development?
Sustainability in the maritime industry:
Shipping and/or maritime industries and transport services have a very fundamental role in the worldwide development of economy: they have been the crucial resources using which Europe had been able to compete in the global market. At this point of time, as much as 80% of the trade that is conducted worldwide and as much as 40% of all the trade that is conducted in the European market is facilitated by the sea ports: and a huge percentage of the fleet that runs in the world are owned by various companies that have their origins in Europe (Commission of the European Communities 2009). The transportation capacity of modern day ships are enormous: thus the environmental impact of these transportation facility is much lower than other facility used for trade, in terms of carbon emission per piece of product transported. As of now, modern day ships are the most carbon efficient transport system that are being used in the commercial purposes (Figure 1-1).
Nevertheless, the rate of carbon emissions of all maritime transport system can still be compared any industry that has significant effect on the national economy of the country, and still is responsible for as much as 3% of the total carbon that is emitted worldwide (Buhaug et al., 2010). The United Nation Climate Change Convention is a forum that targets the efforts that that are being made to reduce the rate of carbon emission that is associated with the major industries of national importance: the very same effort is expected from the maritime industry also. Only if this industry increases its attention towards achieving the objective of ‘zero waste, zero emission’ in long term basis, the CO2 emissions can be reduced significantly by a combined effect of measures taken in the domains of technology, operations and/ or other measures that depend on the market: thus moving towards a significant improvement in environmental performances by the implementation of sustainable development.
Figure 1.1: Carbon emission of transportation system in million tons. Source: Buhaug et. all, 2010
The steady rise in the prices of oil and the generalized changes in the market of energy production play a crucial role in the sustainability of the maritime industry. However, the most recent trend in the commercial shipping and/ or maritime industry is the attention that is being given on the environmental performances of the shipping companies and the associated industries: the roles they play towards the protection of environment is being scrutinized strictly, as the particulars of the consequences of climatic change are the top rated agenda of the UN (Cruise and Maritime Voyages, 2015). This is because the combustion of fuel is one of the fundamental operational activities involved in this industry and the investments in this sector is expected to steadily increase with the implementation of policies that address the reduction of carbon emission in the global level: such policies being aimed at the reduction in the total amount of carbon emission that is contributed by the shipping industry across the world.
According to the International Council on Clear Transportation, ocean shipping particularly dominates the domain of international commercial cargo transportation. The very same sources claim that cargo ships are globally considered as the source of most polluting combustion, the pollution being calculated for each metric ton of fuel that is consumed (Hildreth and Torbitt, 2010)
The emission made by marine engines is however far higher and much more polluting than the various other conventional sources of pollution: this is because the fuel combusted in such engines is not only of poor quality, but also because as of now, the maritime industry lacks the implementation of strict environmental pollution control policies. The commercial shipping and maritime industry has significant contribution to the global emission of various green house gases like that of sulphur oxides or (SOx), nitrogen oxides or (NOx), hydrocarbons (HyC), particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2), (Hildreth and Torbitt, 2010).
The International Maritime Organization or the IMO is the most influential legislative authority of this industry: in an attempt to reduce the environmental effect of this industry, this particular organization is working towards the implementation of those policies that would be able to some of the very basic issues that are fundamental to this domain. The policies being implemented can be considered as the adaption of various measures that are essentially market based, and mandates the incorporation of different technical initiatives, like that of design matrices used for measuring the energy efficiency of the systems. However, the decision making process that is conducted by the International Maritime Organization or the IMO takes huge amount of time: especially the entire process of taking decision about some issue to process implementing it physically might take up to several years (Hildreth and Torbitt, 2010). Thus, some of the companies are voluntarily taking initiatives that would be able to increase their energy efficiency and decrease the rate of fuel consumption (Londoncontainerterminal, 2015).
This proposed research aims at introducing various sustainable developmental strategies that would increase the efficiency of the port of Tilbury. The port of Tilbury is a part of the Forth Ports: a commercial organization that runs 6 other ports located at Grangemouth in Scotland, Burntisland located in Fife, Methil in Fife, Rosyth near Edinburgh, Leith near Edinburgh and Dundee in Scotland.
Figure 1.2: Forth Ports
The port provides services in paper pulp and forest products and also a wide range of general and bulk cargoes.The port is situated at Tilbury in the Essex County of the United Kingdom, on the Thames River (investessex.co.uk, 2015). The Tilbury port considered as the primary port of the country: it is the principle port that the country uses to import paper. However, the port also has the facilities that can be used to import cars (Ltd., 2015).
The location of the port makes it much more potential to cause pollution: the carbon emission of this port not only pollutes the environment of the county, but also affects the bio diversity of the entire river. Thus the introduction of sustainable development plans is necessary in this case, so that the port can operate in a much more efficient way (Forthports.co.uk, 2015).
Figure 1.3: Port of Tilbury
The Port of Tilbury is around 125 years old, and is still considered as the primary port of London. It is has also been awarded as the ‘Green port’ of UK, due to the steps that it has taken towards the reduction of carbon emission. The port uses wind turbines for the production of electricity, has invested in various other renewable energy sources including biomass and has incorporated various routing –techniques using which the maritime vehicles can reach the port with as less carbon emission as possible. All these implementation had started from 2008, keeping in mind that the port was to take a huge role in the 2012 Olympics held at London: before that period, the port of Tilbury used to contribute to as much as 14 percent of the total carbon emission of London. However, recent researches indicate that the implementation of the new technologies aimed at harnessing the power of renewable sources of energy has been fruitful; the carbon emission rates have reduced by a margin of 10 percent.
The carbon emissions generated by the ocean shipping transport sector has proved to be a very important and crucial source of the carbon emission s generated worldwide that is continuously polluting the environment. The various sources of carbon emission that exist on the land are being controlled by various policies, thus increasing the importance of the reduction of carbon emission by ocean based industries, namely the ports and the shipping vehicles. Increasing the cost of energy sources is one strategy that is being taken, besides the implementation of various upcoming regulations that would regulate the sector of maritime industry, in order to focus on the improvement of energy efficiency, such that the carbon emission rates could be reduced. The reductions of carbon emission rates will ultimately have a significant effect on the changes in climate changes.
Various regulatory bodies encourage the policies and / or practices of Green shipping: such regulatory bodies have defined rules and regulations on the shipping corporations that are now forcing them to conduct business and/ or business collaborations by the integration of responsible environmental and/or social practices into the management of transportation (Lai, Wong and Lun, 2011).
The port of Tilbury is considered as the green port of London, as they have put much effort in the reduction of carbon emission. The port of Tilbury has officially announced that they will be voluntarily taking part in the mission adapted by the government of UK to reduce carbon emission rates by 2050 by a significant quantity, hence the requirement for further investigation in the domain of sustainable development.
As the ports have a unique position as the key centers of supply chains, thus they have the ability to influence the sustainable operations of the supply chains: this unique feature provides the sea ports with opportunities and/ or responsibilities so as to contribute significantly to the decrease in the emission of pollutant particles. The fundamental aim of the proposed research is to find out those state of the art environmental policies that could be used to address the situation of changes in climate due to emission of pollutants and that of the quality of air in the adjacent areas for the port of Tilbury. Although the port already has implemented various management strategies for controlling pollution, yet further improvement is possible in terms of reduction in emission of carbon products and / or other green house gasses that have a significant role in the change of climate being perceived in the region. A present, the port of Tilbury has invested in large number of projects that aim at harnessing renewable sources of energy, yet the disposal of the wastes generated due to these projects have become a huge problem for the port. At present, the wastes are being used for the purpose of land-filling in the south eastern parts of the country; but the process itself is creating much environmental pollution (Shipping Emissions in Ports, 2015).
In July 2014, the port joined hands with SITA UK, an organization specializing in waste management, in order to set up a recycling hub that will be effective from 2016. This recycling hub will be utilized for the purpose of disposal of the wastes (Resource.co, 2015).
However, the government of the United Kingdom has been proposed by various forums to include the shipping and maritime industry in the initiative that is being made towards the reduction of carbon emission of the country by 2050. The port of Tilbury has officially announced that they will be voluntarily taking part in this mission, hence the requirement for further investigation in the domain of sustainable development (McKINNON, 2013).
The proposed research project will emphasize on the process of dealing with the unawareness that exists among the various authorities of the port, with regard to the various opportunities that are already available for the sustainable development of the port of Tilbury. The aim of the project will be to investigate the answer to the following research question:
Which state of the art environmental policies should be implemented at the port of Tilbury to face the challenges of climatic change and increased rate of pollutant emission that is deteriorating the quality of the air?
The research question can be subdivided into two parts: the first part aims at identification of the state of the art environmental policies that could be implemented to reduce the rate of pollution on all the ports of the world.
The second part will concentrate on the evaluation of those strategies in order to find out those strategies which will be relevant to the port of Tilbury.
As the UK government has introduced industrial taxes on the rates of carbon emitted by organizations, the decrease in the rate of pollution emission will also be economical towards the port of Tilbury and the facts and figures derived from the analysis of the project report will be utilized to estimate the economic benefit of the organization as achieved from the incorporation of the recommended solutions (F o r t h P o r t s P L C, 2015).
The research process, needless to say, started with the investigation of the various state of the art environmental strategies and / or policies that can be used to address the various climatic changes that are being perceived due to the increased rate pollution emission and the steadily deteriorating quality of air in adjacent to the ports. However, mush before the actual investigation started, a list of those leading ports which are currently facing environmental issues was prepared. The World Port Climate Initiative or the WPCI was found to be that legislative authority which could provide the detailed information required for this process, and the material found on their official website had been the primary source literature that has been consulted in this research (WPCI, 2015).
The data collection method used for this research was dependent on the review of available: the collected documents were studied using an analytical approach, as the process of determining which collected data is useful for the research process was the crucial aspect of the literature review phase (Marshall and Rossman 2006). However, using this method, the relevant data that was collected from the various documents available from the World Port Climate Initiative was found to contain the best possible answers to the research question: thus no existing literature was reviewed further (WPCI, 2015).
Research methodology:
As of now, it has been decided that the following framework will be used for conducting the proposed research:
Figure 4.1: Research methodology
The first part of the research will be conducted based on the data collected from secondary sources: no personal investigations and/ or surveys are to be conducted for collecting data that could be indicative of the strategies that are implemented by the other ports so as to address the challenges of pollution emission. Such a survey, if conducted, would no doubt be helpful to the research: however we are relying on data collected from the secondary sources primarily due to the restrictions of time and budget(WPCI, 2015).
The data which has already been collected through the review of various existing literature and/ or the materials being communicated by the World Port Climate Initiative is being analyzed qualitatively. A simple random sampling technique has been used for data sampling. The literatures were chosen such that they have been published within a range of 10 to 15 years, and have been published in English. Research papers that are older than this timeframe or which have been published in some other language have not been considered. In addition to this, the data set was collected keeping in mind that it should contain data from both national and international levels, such that the global scenario can be assed from the data (WPCI, 2015).
However, in order to find the results of the second part of the question, direct communications with the Port of Tilbury will be required: thus the research will be based on the data collected from primary sources. The process of evaluation and assessment of the strategies will be followed by the implementation of a pilot project: the aim of the project being reduction in the rates of pollutant emission at the port of Tilbury. The pilot project will run for a period of 1 months, after which the carbon emission rates of the port will be measured. The results generated from the tests will be helpful in providing recommendations to the port authority such that they can indulge in efficient operational behavior.
The research has been planned to follow the following time schedule:
|
Task Mode |
Task Name |
Duration |
Start |
Finish |
Predecessors |
Resource Names |
|
Auto Scheduled |
Investigation of the research domain |
15 days |
Mon 16-02-15 |
Fri 06-03-15 |
||
|
Auto Scheduled |
Literature review |
22 days |
Mon 16-02-15 |
Tue 17-03-15 |
||
|
Auto Scheduled |
Finalization of research topic |
6 days |
Wed 18-03-15 |
Wed 25-03-15 |
2 |
|
|
Auto Scheduled |
Literature review/data collection |
21 days |
Thu 26-03-15 |
Thu 23-04-15 |
3 |
research guide |
|
Auto Scheduled |
•Data analysis |
13 days |
Fri 24-04-15 |
Tue 12-05-15 |
3,4 |
research guide, computing devices, analytical tools |
|
Auto Scheduled |
Finding strategies |
15 days |
Wed 13-05-15 |
Tue 02-06-15 |
computing devices, analytical tools |
|
|
Auto Scheduled |
Evaluation of strategies |
15 days |
Wed 03-06-15 |
Tue 23-06-15 |
5 |
|
|
Auto Scheduled |
Implementation of pilot project |
37 days |
Tue 23-06-15 |
Wed 12-08-15 |
Port of Tilbury |
|
|
Auto Scheduled |
results of the pilot project |
7 days |
Thu 13-08-15 |
Fri 21-08-15 |
6 |
|
|
Auto Scheduled |
Recommendations |
3 days |
Fri 21-08-15 |
Tue 25-08-15 |
Figure 4.2: The Gantt Chart of the research project, as implemented in MS Project
As of now, we have been able to abide by the designed schedule. At this point of time the project team is conducting analysis of the various strategies that the literature review has indicated is used for the purpose of facing the challenges of pollutant particle emission at the various ports of the world.
Conclusion:
The primary objective of the research proposal was to present to audience the various details of the problem that is being considered in this research project, along with the representation of the knowledge and/ or tools that have been accessed and/or used during the semester. However, the most important objective of this research proposal was to present to the Port of Tilbury a plan to incorporate significant changes in their operations, such that the port can function with much more efficiency in terms of its responsibilities to the environment. The main focus of this research project is to reduce the emission rates of carbon, green house gases and/ or other pollutant materials that are produced by various functional activities of the port.
It is expected that the final outcomes of the project will be successfully implemented in the port of Tilbury, along with the viable and/ or relevant environmental strategies that they have already incorporated in their system. The time schedule prepared for the project has already considered the implementation of a pilot project in the port of Tilbury. The physical implementation of the pilot project will be helpful in determining that how far the mission of pollutant materials can be curbed by the incorporation of the strategies that will be recommended by this research in near future. Based on the results of the pilot project, further improvement of the working model will also be possible.
Reference:
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