Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
240-250)
MR PETER
BARHAM, MR
ALAN CARTWRIGHT
AND MR
HOWARD HOLT
18 NOVEMBER 2008
Q240 Mr Chaytor: Is there a forum
where the Environment Agency, the MCA and the Harbour Authorities
come together to discuss the general issue of regulation, or do
you operate entirely in three separate cells?
Mr Barham: I am not aware of any
specific forum where they come together. There is quite a lot
of linkage in maybe a more informal way. There has been a lot
of discussion, for example, over the last two or three years about
the Marine Bill. Obviously the Environment Agency will have their
views, Natural England, the MCA and others; but I am not aware
of any formal body. It is quite a good point actually.
Mr Cartwright: I would like to
see a bit more joined-up work going there. It is not air emissions,
but there has been a huge amount of trouble just recently which
the ports have been having (and I will come back on to this because
it impacts on emissions) about dredging. This is all linked into
the Marine Bill and other aspects of environmental protection
governance. The ports and the MCA have got a view, and the Environment
Agency have taken a different view which has not been, shall we
say, conducive to sensible port management as we would see it,
and has actually got in the way of developing measures that would
improve efficiency of the ports. A lead from government on drawing
together those bodies—the Environment Agency, MCA and the
ports—would certainly help.
Mr Barham: One of the things that
we have been asking for with the Marine Bill of course is that
the new Marine Management Organisation will actually be an opportunity
to bring some of that together and reduce some of the overlap.
That is an issue we have discussed with this Committee previously
and elsewhere.
Q241 Mr Chaytor: Coming back specifically
to the question of emissions, we have had some evidence to the
inquiry that congestion in ports is a significant factor in excess
emissions that could be avoided. Is that the case? If so, what
is being done to reduce the volume of congestion in the ports
for which you have responsibility?
Mr Cartwright: Congestion I think
has been a particular problem that all of us have seen, particularly
perhaps with the box trades, the container trades, and ro-ro.
It has not been helped. It has been recognised by Government that
there is this issue of lack of capacity in ports working, despite
various measures to make the landside of the cargo handling as
efficient as possible. The sheer bulk of the demand of the market
for shipping of goods by container is recognised as leading to
congestion. However, in a variety of areas represented here we
have seen significant and unexplainable delays in the process
of getting that increased capacity through to approval. In the
Port of London Authority's case, of course the London Gateway
approval process took nine years. It is shameful when the demand
for reducing congestion, and building up the ability to get ships
in and out and the cargo that the UK needs for its economic wellbeing,
is held up in that way. To those involved: unexplainable ways.
Q242 Mr Chaytor: If we are about
to enter the worst recession in 60 years then the rapid growth
in shipping in the last 15 years is not going to continue, is
it? Maybe congestion will be resolved by the slowing down in trade
generally?
Mr Barham: In fairness, the trends
(and obviously they are forecasts and we have no evidence until
they happen) are that container growth particularly will continue
once the recession is over. If it does that and comes down, it
is going to go back up again. You may be aware that the Department
for Transport are asking major ports industries to come up with
master plans for the next 30 years; and it is intended that those
master plans would include anticipated plans for growth. You are
quite right in the short-term, but I think in the medium to longer
term there is probably a very different climate.
Mr Holt: It was mentioned earlier,
in terms of container ports it is really where it has manifested
itself, and those have been peak demands with the early arrivals
of goods for Christmas, and those sorts of things. It has not
actually happened in quite the same way this year. In terms of
ro-ro, congestion is not quite the same sort of problem manifesting
itself today. Indeed, the delays when you talk about ro-ro are
much smaller. You do not tend to keep a ship full of passengers
and vehicles hanging around too long. Certainly looking ahead,
and I would endorse entirely what my colleague said, the Department
for Transport are still sticking with the work that they did in
2006-07 when they did some really good forecasting. Our own master
plan for the next 30 years shows significant growth, really just
driven by European trade. Yes, there has been a blip. This year
we actually saw the downturn in our figures from spring this year
because we are a bellwether for European trade—what passes
through the port. We have had these blips before and there seems
to be an underlying trend curve and one seems to get back onto
that after a number of years. That has been what happened in the
past. At the moment certainly I would endorse that we need to
do an expansion of our port. We are concerned, and I believe I
can say the Department of Transport is possibly a little bit concerned,
the process for delivering that will be lengthy and may be overtaken
by the demand in the meantime, thus causing congestion.
Q243 Joan Walley: You just mentioned
growth projections. I am just curious to know whether or not they
are taking into account either peak oil or future carbon price
on shipping fuel?
Mr Holt: I doubt that the DfT
figures took into account the carbon price, because that study
was really based in 2006. I think at that time we all thought
that the figures used then were about 2% of carbon globally. The
figure has of course gone up. We heard this morning five or six.
It is more usually recognised I believe at 4.5%. That has come
on to the agenda in those two years. What has happened in the
last year had not happened two years ago. Nevertheless, we are
in discussions with Department for Transport now and we will revisit
our forecasts and have done, but they are actually based on the
growth of European trade. It may all cost more but if UK plc has
effectively outsourced a lot of its manufacture into continental
Europe and Eastern Europe, and if that is the way it is going
to carry on being, then the trade will come.
Q244 Jo Swinson: Earlier the process
of generating electricity shoreside not from the ships was mentioned—cold
ironing. How much of an impact could that have on improving air
quality within ports?
Mr Holt: That again depends—and
I think the port representatives here will have the same view
but we can put it in slightly different contexts. Certainly in
terms of my own port, if you look at it superficially then ferries
are probably an ideal vehicle to try this out on straight away
because the same vessel will be coming in and out for ten years;
and it is going to the same ports all the time; and it looks like
a good idea, The problem—apart from the infrastructure side,
which is expensive to put in—is the sheer power demand of
these ships. These are ships with restaurants, cafes, bars and
whatever on board—shopping centres in effect—the power
demand is huge. The other problem is that they are in port for
a very short time. Our minimum turn-round time in the Port of
Dover is half an hour for one of these ferries. Ten minutes to
unload; five minutes to re-store; a quarter of an hour to put
120 lorries back on and it is gone. You can imagine in that time
that someone coming off the ship with a large plug, putting it
in a large socket and then reversing the process before it sails
adds to the length of time. It is also, as I say, a very large
power demand, and do you really want the possibility of a blackout
or brownout while you are changing over? There are a lot of practical
problems for that. In terms of at the port—potentially cold
ironing will obviously reduce the emissions in the port. In the
UK, where we generate a lot of our power by coal, are we not just
transferring that from the port to Stoke-on-Trent, or somewhere
else?
Mr Cartwright: If I can come in
on that point. I gave a presentation to a conference on this very
subject just recently and I did some research, and I am very happy
to offer the Committee the slides of that presentation which shows
some pictures. Cold ironing is not a new phenomenon. I was in
the Royal Navy; whenever we came into port we would go on to shore
supply. We had standards; we had standard cables; we had connectors;
and if we could get on to shore supply then I could shut down
and get on with my maintenance, or perhaps go on leave—but
never before the cooks and stewards, but never mind! That made
it a lot easier because we had a standard. At the moment there
is a lot of work going on headed up by the IMO with IAX and the
classification societies trying to find standards that will apply
to ships. I would agree with Howard that ferries, short sea shipping
and frequent runners are the ideal ships. Some shipping companies,
Maersk for example, really like to have a dedicated berth at the
ports that they go to, and they will run a line and they will
have a ship coming in every two or three days and connecting up.
Where you have got that situation that is an ideal opportunity
because you can then provide a system that can be plugged in.
Quite apart from the problem of where does the power come from,
and is it environmentally beneficial—which remains a problem
in the UK and a lot of Western European countries—there
is then also the problem of getting the power to the terminal.
In London many of our terminals are in remote locations. The nearest
power of the capacity that you need for these sorts of ships might
be three or four miles away. Any kind of mandation is going to
then place an enormous cost, because it is the user who pays in
this world, and the ships will just go elsewhere. It is as simple
as that: ships will go elsewhere. They will go to other ports;
they will go to mainland Europe; and then we become dependent
on a feeder service, which is just not beneficial. However, where
significant port developments are going ahead, for example London
Gateway, Bristol, other areas where they are doing that, then
it is sensible for them to put that infrastructure in, trusting
that there is a power supply that can be provided with some kind
of environmental benefit. Certainly on the Thames, electricity
is lazy and it will come from the nearest power source and that
will be Tilbury coal-fired power station or the Isle of Grain
coal-fired power station.
Q245 Jo Swinson: On this issue of
the environmental friendliness of the power generation, some UK
ports have already got on-site renewable generation. How feasible
is it to encourage that? What could the Government do to incentivise
more ports to take that into account, which would get over some
of the problems you have been describing?
Mr Barham: My company is currently
looking a lot at shoreside power through wind generation and things
like that. We modelled that if we worked hard at it we could be
carbon neutral by about 2015, and that would seriously reduce
electricity bills. There are real benefits to doing it. The simple
fact, of course, is that you have to transmit that electricity
produced into the national grid and there are various licensing
issues. Clearly you could not guarantee on that supply alone,
as a free-standing supply, to supply ships, because if the wind
does not blow you have got no electricity. You are still into
the technical issues that Alan talked about with regard to making
the electricity available for ships. For example, we looked at
it in Southampton and you are talking about many, many millions
on the infrastructure problem to resolve this; and there simply
is not the power generation locally to supply electricity to the
ships. Sure, there are more and more companies looking to reduce
our electricity bills.
Mr Cartwright: Yes, where it can
be done. For example, Port of Bristol Company and Liverpool have
got quite large generators in. There are some mechanisms that
Government could help with in this regard: one is the Capital
Allowances Environmentally Beneficial Plants and Machinery Order
2003, which gives a list of systems of plant and so on, on which
a company can gain capital allowance benefits which helps everyone;
but for some reason this Order seems almost specifically to exclude
anything that is helpful to ports—our new boats that we
are bringing in and so on. The other thing is with planning—these
need planning assistance.
Q246 Mark Lazarowicz: The European
Commission has indicated that it would consider varying port dues
or giving unloading priority to ships with higher environmental
standards. Would such a system work in UK ports?
Mr Cartwright: In the European
model then, yes, it can. Ports at Helsinki have been very proactive
with this, but they are municipally controlled ports. They are
not a plc; they are not required to make a profit; they simply
can act as the servant of their national or indeed European government.
Q247 Joan Walley: It is actually
not privatised?
Mr Cartwright: Yes.
Q248 Mark Lazarowicz: Is it quite
an effective way of achieving a result?
Mr Cartwright: It would be. I
think that would work very closely with the Design Index that
we heard about earlier, and you have heard about from the Chamber
of Shipping. That would be a level playing field, but of course
only on new ships. The difficulty comes, of course, in the UK
model where we have got the different models of ports. Sure, we
could offer an incentive in terms of the conservancy charges on
either the ships or the cargoes for ships that have got a low
index number and they are environmentally beneficial. We are not
subsidised so we have got to make a profit. We would therefore
have to charge other ships more. That is a model that needs a
lot of research to see if it could be worked. It would be difficult
to mandate it because we do not have that state control of our
ports.
Mr Holt: I think you asked two
questions there: one was about priority treatment of a ship that
was greener. Everything that has been said about dues I support;
but in terms of giving priority to a certain ship that turns up
because it is a bit greener, I think that begins to give real
problems to ports in terms of the relationships they have with
their shipping operators and so on. That one is a little bit more
problematic. I would question whether speeding the green ship
to the berth and putting the dirtier ones to circle longer is
actually a good solution.
Q249 Mark Lazarowicz: My last question
is of a technical nature and it may be better to give you time
to respond in writing. Can you give us information on what data
on fuel consumption is already collected by ports; and whether
that data could be used to calculate and record emissions? In
addition, it has also been suggested that emissions could be apportioned
based on a country's imports. Do you collect enough data to make
that possible?
Mr Holt: I think it is a fairly
qualified no in both cases. In the case of most of the ferries,
although some bunkering takes place in Dover, the majority of
the bunkering takes places on the other side of the water, as
it were. We would not have those figures. We probably do not have
the bunkering figures particularly for Dover, although those might
be more obtainable but it would only give a very small part of
the picture.
Mr Barham: I think it is important
to emphasise that, by and large, the UK ports industry is about
operating berths, operating quaysides et cetera. The arrangement
between ships, their owners, their fuel providers, their waste
removers, is a relationship between the shipper, his agent and
whichever company he is dealing with, either to provide fuel or
else to take away his waste. We are simply there to provide a
landlord for tenant's operations, or to provide safe navigation
in harbours. So it is not information that we would routinely
measure.
Q250 Mark Lazarowicz: We either go
to the shipping companies, the fuel suppliers or the agents?
Mr Cartwright: The bunker companies
would be the best place. They are required for weights and measures
reasons to keep a very accurate record of what is transferred
to which ship and what flag it has. I remember from my days at
sea the forms that you have to fill in, get signed and so on and
they go off to the bunkering companies and so on. The Treasury
takes an interest through the VAT and duty. If it is a small ship
there might be some duty or VAT impact so that is measured very
carefully; but, as my colleagues have said, it does not come through
the port authorities. On the grounds that the user pays, the user
being the UK Government, you would have to pay us for gathering
this data because I can see it being a really complex bureaucratic
exercise. The best place to go is to the bunker companies.
Joan Walley: On that note, I would
like to thank all three of you very much for coming along. I think
we have covered a lot of ground and probably opened up some other
aspects. I could see when you were sat there in the public gallery
there was some headshaking going on. Genuinely, if there are issues
you think have been raised during the course of this morning then
please feel free to submit further supplementary evidence. Mr
Cartwright, the paper you have produced, we would very much welcome
a copy of that. Thank you very much indeed.
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