The idea that people only care for things that are familiar is often applied to the environmental context. If people are removed from nature, they won’t care about it. It resembles some sort of “stranger danger”, the reservations parents instill into their children that strangers might do bad things to them. Nature thus becomes a threat, a hostile and untamed environment to be avoided.
But ships are exposed to the elements all the time. Through most of their operational lifespans, they are alone in the wilderness. Well, not completely alone, because they are taken care of by their crews. Still, they are at the mercy of the environment, be it a meandering river or the open ocean. Ship owners cannot afford to ignore nature, not only due to the extensive environmental regulations, but also because of physics and biology. They are constantly fighting rust, decay and hull incrustation. They try to avoid storms. Although ships are constantly at odds with nature, they depend on it. Not only because they need the water to float on, but because a sustainable economy is, by definition, much better for the long-term prospects of their business.
Therefore, one of the key concerns of a ship owner today should be how to better reconcile its fleet with nature.
Hence come the sulfur regulations and the decarbonization agenda, which are ways to limit the previously overlooked atmospheric externalities of ships. The ballast water regulations and banning of certain antifouling paints cater to similar concerns regarding impacts on the marine ecosystem.
Still, the ship is an alien element in nature. It is not a natural object, so one might raise his eyebrows if we make the case for nature-based solutions in shipping.
What is a nature-based solution? According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), nature-based solutions are interventions that use biodiversity and ecosystem services to address societal challenges. Think, on a small scale, a garden wall in an airport terminal to improve well-being or, on a larger scale, an urban restoration of wetlands to adapt to constant flooding.
What would nature-based interventions look like in shipping?
First, let’s not get discouraged by the often-enigmatic jargon in the field, such as nature-negative or telecoupling. The goal here is to reduce environmental impact, mainly pollution and climate change.
The most obvious nature-based solutions derive from just considering an old, traditional sailboat. They are built using natural materials and rely on nature-based propulsion.
Nature-based materials
Although wood is a fantastic material, we don’t have the technology yet to use it in the large-scale construction of the hulls of oceangoing cargo vessels. It remains a work of craftsmanship. But this might change in the future. Let’s not forget that wood was almost written off as a building material for large land-based structures until glued laminated timber (glulam), cross-laminated timber (CLT), and other engineered wood materials were developed. Wood-based materials lower the carbon footprint of large structures while improving their liveability.
Still, no similar technology is available for marine applications. There are several challenges, such as the development of waterproof resins, more productive and safe joining methods, and cost. Can these challenges be overcome? It is hard to know. For now, wood for hull construction is not yet scalable. Commercially, only traditional boats and some high-end classic yachts have their hulls made of wood.
However, for deck applications and interior furnishings, there are plenty of options. Why not go back to the use of teak decks? Too expensive and hard to maintain, of course. The same applies to hardwood in the interior. But for both interior and deck applications, the development of bio-composites is a clear indication that nature-based materials solutions are becoming viable, especially for displacing plastics. They are already a reality in the automotive and aerospace sectors.
Nature-based propulsion
In propulsion applications, the development is much more mature. A wide variety of biofuels is already commercially available, although there are still many challenges to overcome. The low-carbon fuels of the future are likely to have the original fossil-based incarnation, the bio-version, and the e-version. While the former will be eventually phased out, biofuels and e-fuels will coexist for a long time, not necessarily as competitors, but as complementary products. To some extent, they are both nature-based and renewable. Green e-fuels mainly rely on the sun and wind for electricity, while a significant fraction of advanced biofuels rely on agriculture feedstocks such as corn, sugarcane, rapeseed, soy, and palm oil.
All of that natural input, however, is indirect. Calling alternative fuels nature-based solutions might be reasonable to some, but certainly not to all. It’s a new debate with many angles that is not yet fully settled. Particularly, a valid concern is the impact of biofuels on land use, with its implications on deforestation and food production. The land use dilemma also applies to the biomaterials we discussed previously.
Then there is wind propulsion. It is also experiencing a strong comeback with a variety of solutions. Here the connection to nature is much more direct, so this is unequivocally a nature-based solution. A welcome development, but wind alone will hardly deliver more than 30% of fuel savings, with most solutions closer to the 10% range, depending on the tech, the ship, and the trade route.
Navigation
Using technology to improve navigation efficiency is one of the hottest segments in the maritime industry right now. Processing power and satellite communication have become much more affordable and the analytics environment is much more mature. As a result, smart navigation, just-in-time arrival planning, and weather routing are already a reality. Although heavily dependent on artificial things such as sensors, data centers, and intelligence itself, this approach is fundamentally a way to work with nature, not against it.
Green spaces onboard
Even though large cruise ships and superyachts have been featuring gardens for years, for commercial shipping they are still dependent on the initiative of enthusiastic seafarers who just happen to like gardening.
The problem is the complexity, the limited space – and above all – the limited time aboard. Seafarers have just too much to do aboard to care about greenery. Still, once in a while a green finger comes along. You can see that, for example, in this clip featuring the RMS Dwarka from 1979, and in this interesting reddit thread. “Great way to fight scurvy and boredom”, commented a user that probably watched too many pirate movies.
But the advantages are also clear. A more pleasant environment and the ability to produce food aboard. Will it ever be possible? As with biomaterials, here the shipping industry can benefit from development in other industries, particularly urban farming and space exploration. As more compact and automated turn-key food production systems become available, they may find their way aboard ships. It is of course not possible for such gardens at sea to feed the whole crew. The quantities and variety needed are just too great. But they might provide a fraction of greens consumption while providing additional indirect benefits such as lower emissions and improved well-being – as long as it’s not too much additional work!
A tech-induced reconciliation
In the end, it is all about technology, efficacy and efficiency. We are in the midst of a fundamental change. The energy transition brings a lot of disruption and opportunities. Most nature-based solutions can be considered millennia old, but they all have modern iterations and are constantly evolving. Physics is not changing, but our understanding of it is. This is true for new biomaterials, advanced biofuels, modern wind propulsion, new smart navigation systems, and green food production aboard. The time has come for nature-based solutions in shipping, because such solutions mean better, more efficient, and more sustainable ships and a healthier natural environment. It is a tech-induced reconciliation, a bridge between the past and the future.
Note: the illustration is generated by Microsoft Designer AI. No mess room currently looks like that. Yet!
Maritime South 