Jason Anderson

A not-so-commonly known fact is that the global shipping industry carries a heavy carbon footprint. The sector is responsible for three percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and over 60,000 deaths each year. In July the International Maritime Organization released a strategy to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2040. In this interview Jason Anderson, senior programe director at ClimateWorks, discusses with Alliance digital editor, Charlotte Kilpatrick, what funders can do to help the industry achieve its goals.

Charlotte Kilpatrick: Jason, could you introduce yourself and explain a bit about your role at ClimateWorks Foundation?

Jason Anderson: I’m a senior program director at ClimateWorks Foundation, and that means that I cover the strategy and grantmaking for a few different areas including shipping.

CK: I think when people think about climate change, shipping is not something that comes to mind. What can you tell people who don’t know about shipping’s role in climate change?

JA: The global maritime shipping industry emits about a gigaton of carbon a year, which is similar to the amount that the coal-fired power plants in the United States might emit, or about the seventh largest country in the world (if it were a country). So, it’s a significant amount even though it is between 2% and 3% of total carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions a year.

Credit: International Maritime Organization/Flickr

The other thing is that the shipping industry has been using these very dirty fuels which also emit particulates that are damaging to human health. And tens of thousands of people a year die from the kinds of lung diseases that result from that particulate pollution. By switching to something cleaner, shipping would emit fewer particulates and less carbon dioxide, both of which address those pollution issues.

CK: How would you describe green shipping? What does that transition look like?

JA: The transition has several parts to it. You can start simply by slowing a ship down. The amount of carbon dioxide, which is also a function of how much fuel gets used, increases exponentially as you increase the speed. So it’s not linear, but as you then conversely slow down, you’re using dramatically less fuel and therefore fewer carbon emissions. The shipping industry is quite capable of making these kinds of operational decisions which reduce emissions right away.

‘The reason why that small amount of money has been helpful is that, as you started off by saying, not a lot of people know about this industry. It also translates to negotiators and others involved who are not used to anybody paying attention to them. So even with a little bit of attention, they perk up and say, “Oh, there are people watching us — so let’s actually get something done here.”’

You can also improve the efficiency of the ship through technical measures. That would involve everything from different kinds of hull coatings to putting a wind sail on, and these are things that can be retrofitted or put onto new ships. It’s a whole range of operational and efficiency measures, including some around logistics.

One of the things that the shipping industry does now is contracts where you’re punished if you’re late arriving at a port. If the industry had a better logistics system or a better contracting system that prevented them from going so quickly, we would save a lot of emissions.

CK: As you know, philanthropy’s contribution to mitigating climate change is relatively small. What would you say philanthropy can do to help, particularly with shipping, if anything?

JA: Using philanthropic dollars, we’ve built a coalition to work on decarbonizing the shipping industry. In the past, we had only a couple million dollars a year. We were able to keep attention on the International Maritime Organisation or the IMO, which is the global regulator, and put pressure on negotiators to pass some policies that have had some pretty positive effects on the industry.

The reason why that small amount of money has been helpful is that, as you started off by saying, not a lot of people know about this industry. It also translates to negotiators and others involved who are not used to anybody paying attention to them. So even with a little bit of attention, they perk up and say, “Oh, there are people watching us — so let’s actually get something done here.” Philanthropy has had quite important effects.

Credit: International Maritime Organization/Flickr

Over the past couple of years, philanthropic interest in this sector has been growing and is allowing us to address all the different levels of governance and all the different aspects of the industry, which is quite complicated. What philanthropy can do is to knit together the story of how all of those pieces work together and play off of the different levels of positive actions for an upward spiral.

CK: Looking ahead, what are some of the solutions here that you are looking at, or some of the projects you’ve funded that are forward-looking about how we can cut back on emissions?

JA: The first order of business is to make operational and technical changes to the ship that reduce its fuel consumption. And that’s super important because you can get a lot done for a very little amount of money. But then for the longer-term shift, we’re talking about moving away from carbon-based fuels to other types of fuels.

Now, ideally, you would be using renewable energy in some form, and the most direct form would be electricity itself. This is similar to what we’re doing with cars, where we put renewable energy into batteries. The thing about ships is that they go huge distances through waves and wind, and a battery would just fill up the entire ship.

The question is if we need the same level of autonomy. You can go on a ship now — an ocean-going vessel — for three months and all over the world without refuelling. To some degree, we need to take into account the physics and imagine, let’s say, that the smaller ships or the shorter routes could be electrified.

‘A lot of what we’re doing as philanthropy is working with the frontline communities — the advocates who have been facing pollution from ports in particular for decades — and saying, ships are a really important part of this equation.’

But then we enter the longer routes, with a hydrogen-based fuel that’s going to be either hydrogen directly or perhaps ammonia, which is a little bit denser, so you don’t need quite as much space in the hold. Of course, space in the hold translates into money you’re not making by transporting cargo. Methanol is another option as the first direction that a lot of companies like Maersk are going because it’s a simpler transition for combustion.

CK: One thing that stood out to me was the health ramifications of shipping. Do you think there’s a role for philanthropy to step in here to help with sailors? I saw that in Los Angeles, asthma and cancer rates were the highest around the port. Is there a role for philanthropy here?

JA: Absolutely. And part of that is because people often don’t realise what the impact of ships is on air pollution, simply because they’re often offshore or are at a port that is not visible to them. In the Los Angeles basin during the COVID-19 crisis, you had all those ships offshore that were polluting much more than all the cars and trucks and trains and lawnmowers and everything else combined in the rest of Los Angeles County.

A lot of what we’re doing as philanthropy is working with the frontline communities — the advocates who have been facing pollution from ports in particular for decades — and saying, ships are a really important part of this equation. You might see the trucks going by your front door and so trucks are often the first thing people are concerned about. They absolutely should be, but we’re integrating ships into that equation for them. And there’s been a fair amount of advocacy with the support of local communities.

For example, in California, there’s a new harborcraft rule, which means that the smaller ships like tugboats all the way up to ferries have to use clean fuels within a certain number of years. Because they’re right near the ports, this rule has a really big air pollution benefit.

CK: From what you’re saying, it sounds like if you were going to throw philanthropic money at something, throwing it at shipping for climate change is a lot of bang for your buck. You would agree with that?

JA: I think it is for a couple of reasons. One is that it has a lot of impact on people’s daily lives in a couple of different ways. The first is that there are people exposed to that pollution. The second is that 90% of goods are moved by ships, and so actually it’s an important part of our trade and our economy. And we’re in the middle of a very important process right now.

In the next couple of years, the IMO is going to change its climate regulations for ships. They just passed a policy in the summer — a new strategy — about getting to zero emissions. That’s a huge deal for the IMO, which has tended to be fairly slow-moving and conservative. Now they have two years to work out what the policy measures will be to reach that goal. At the moment, we have a very big window of opportunity to shift the industry from the top level to an industry that benefits local communities.