Painting a black picture of shipping's green future Wednesday, 09.Mar.2011, 02:47 (GMT+3) Growth in world trade could lead to maritime’s carbon footprint increasing 300% by 2050.
Industry's carbon footprint will expand 300% as world trade grows
Growth in world trade could lead to maritime’s carbon footprint increasing 300% by 2050.
Speaking
to the Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association, Martin
Stopford, MD of Clarkson Research, said container shipping’s current
carbon footprint was only slightly less than that of Germany.
He said the container fleet had a capacity of 121 million kilowatts,
while the electricity generating capacity of Germany was 139 million
kilowatts.
“This shows that there is an awful lot under our [the industry’s] control,” Stopford said.
However, this is expected to increase, with China and emerging
economies continuing to grow and become more reliant on shipping.
He pointed out that China’s population was greater than any other
nation’s, but while Japan annually imported 7.5 tonnes of cargo per
capita, Europe 6.2 tonnes, and North America 3.8 tonnes, China only
imported 0.8 tons per capita. The total import figure for China was 1.4
billion tonnes.
If today’s trends continued, he said, seaborne
cargo would rise from 8 billion to 26 billion tonnes by 2050, which
would result in a 300% increase in shipping’s carbon footprint.
Currently the global shipping fleet stands at 1.3 billion dead weight
tonnes, but this is likely to grow: the latest figures show that the
fleet is growing at 7% per year.
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