Transitioning to a low carbon future is more of a business issue than it is about the technologies available today.
Katharine Palmer, Sustainability & Environmental Manager at Lloyd’s Register believes that the industry must engage at the senior executive level and not at the technical superintendent level in order to make strategic decisions that benefit a low carbon future.
Historically shipping has solved regulatory issues by deploying new technologies, but Palmer believes today it is not a case of the technologies that are available, but more about changing business structure, financing and sharing risk.
Collaboration is vital to this. If shipping wants to solve some of the big complex challenges, it must collaborate. It cannot do it on its own. It needs to share and learn from other sectors, and think outside of its traditional industry.
According to Palmer, this means it is a whole shipping system change, not just an isolated change to do with the ship. Change cannot be focussed on having a regulation and using that to develop technology to meet the performance standards required.
The industry has already experienced this, responding to regulations by developing and deploying new technologies. Now it is time to look at how to operate differently in order to have a successful business in 20-30 years’ time when the boundaries and the world around shipping is changing so much.
Fathom-News
editor@fathom-mi.com
