Nordic Maritime 2022: Close-up Interviews with Maritime Experts from the Nordics and Singapore
On April 4th, the Nordic Maritime 2022 conference was organised by the Nordic Embassies, Trade Promotion Offices, Nordic Innovation House in Singapore, Nordic Innovation and North Atlantic Co-operation (NORA), to promote the Nordic sustainable shipping and port operations, ocean tech, and green maritime innovations, and show how we support businesses, research and academic cooperations with Singapore and the Southeast Asian region. It was held in conjunction and co-located with the annual Singapore Maritime Week organised by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
Close-up Interviews with Maritime Experts from the Nordics and Singapore
Nordic Innovation House also had a chance to get up close to ask critical questions that impact our oceans today. Starting with an opening speech by H.E. Sigríður Ásdís Snævarr, the Ambassador of Iceland to Singapore, where she expressed the importance of collaboration with international partners, new opportunities for change and Iceland’s action plans for a sustainable ocean economy.
Then, we interviewed the maritime experts from the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD), Business Finland, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Kongsberg Maritime and Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping to share their valuable insights on:
Decarbonisation aspirations for the maritime sector
How to reach IMO goals in digitalisation and electrification
How digitalisation can support collaboration and synchronise the maritime transport sector
Key challenges faced by maritime organisations in the green transition
New technology developments to reduce carbon emissions within the maritime sector
To find out more, watch the full interview below!
Interview Highlights
Opening remarks by H.E. Sigríður Ásdís Snævarr
Ambassador of Iceland to Singapore, Iceland
H.E. Sigríður Ásdís Snævarr highlighted that a healthy ocean is vital for Iceland and climate change is already putting our oceans at risk, endangering the marine ecosystem. In this decade of ocean science for sustainable development, we build knowledge to facilitate action and we need to collaborate with our international partners like Singapore to create momentum for opportunities and change.
She also shared Iceland’s experiences and actions taken to achieve a green transition and a sustainable ocean economy. “Iceland has already phased out fossil fuels in both electricity production and house heating, proving a transition to renewable energy is feasible. The population has experienced first-hand the benefits of more affordable domestically sourced energy air, and better living standards. Iceland is now ready to embark on the next steps toward a carbon-neutral society. Iceland’s biggest challenge is transitioning to a carbon-free transportation system and for our ocean sector, the plan is for future Icelandic shipping vessels to transition from fossil fuels to locally produced clean energy.”
Watch the full opening speech here.
Interview with Prof Lynn Loo
Chief Executive Officer of Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD)
What are your aspirations for the decarbonisation of the maritime sector?
Prof Lynn Loo: My hope and my aspirations for the shipping sector is that we take action now. We take action today. We do what we can with what we have now, so we can be bending the curve. Of course, we need to work on the long-term solutions, those are hard and they are going to take a while. But in the meantime, we need to start bending the curve, otherwise, the challenge becomes even grander and more challenging for us to think about decarbonisation later on.
How does the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) identify and prioritises its pilots and projects? To find out, click here.
What are some of the key highlights since Prof Lynn Loo took on the role as the CEO of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD)? To find out, click here.
Interview with Esa Lindqvist
Chief Advisor, Maritime and Ports of Business Finland
IMO has goals for 50% carbon footprint by 2030 and zero footprint by 2060. Could you give examples of what we are already doing to reach those goals in digitalisation?
Esa Lindqvist: All the new systems don’t work anymore if there is no digitalisation. For example, when we speak about autonomous shipping, components and systems - everything is placed in digitalisation.
IMO has goals for 50% carbon footprint by 2030 and zero footprint by 2060. Could you give examples of what we are already doing to reach those goals in electrification? To find out, click here.
Interview with Dr Mikael Lind
Senior Strategic Research Advisor of RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
How is digitalisation the key to supporting collaboration and synchronisation in the maritime transport sector?
Dr Mikael Lind: Shipping has been developing for many years, so we are sitting with a very strong heritage of behaviour and practices. Shipping is a self-organised ecosystem or is run under a self-organised ecosystem… it needs to be run by more collaboration and as digitalisation is borderless that means we can utilise digitalisation as a glue to bring the different actors together. Digitalisation is coming and providing us with more and more connected devices, and more and more opportunities to collaborate digitally which means we actually come to a situation where everything can become synchronised.
Why is decarbonisation not advancing at a faster pace and what are the barriers? To find out, click here.
Interview with Henrik Dannström
Director, Global Assembly and Test of Kongsberg Maritime
What are the key challenges facing maritime organisations in the green transition?
Henrik Dannström: One of the key challenges the way we see it is that our clients are typically shipyards. We deliver the equipment to the shipyards whilst the equipment itself has benefits that actually the end-user, the ship owner and the ship operator will benefit from. So part of our challenge is to sell this to the actual ship operator, the technologies and sometimes we have to get the ship owners to understand and to believe in the technology, to see the benefits to them and sometimes also authority regulated. New regulations come from the IMOs and the likes, and that means the whole maritime sector has to slowly transition to adopt these new regulations.
What are the key trends that you see happening in the industry for the green transition? To find out more, click here.
Interview with Dr Bo Cerup-Simonsen
Chief Executive Officer of Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping
How can ordinary citizens help the maritime industry speed up the process toward net-zero emissions?
Dr Bo Cerup-Simonsen: I believe it’s really important that we all consider what we can do to help solve the climate issues. We all have different spheres of influence, we have different ways that we can influence and it goes all the way from customer demand, so we can start to select products to whatever extent is available and we can buy those. So I believe everybody can actually start to work on decarbonisation and understand what is my company’s strategy - should my company have a stronger strategy in this and how can I actually contribute wherever I am in the organisation to get this going.
Which new technology developments are you most excited about reducing carbon emissions?
Dr Bo Cerup-Simonsen: When thinking about the technologies and the sciences that would make the biggest impact over the next three decades, I think we pretty much have them at hand, we pretty much know what they are. So even if I can think of really radical new technologies that could potentially make a huge difference, then we have to focus on the solutions that are available within reasonable bounds and those technologies are related to basically I would say four pathways of energy. So we need to think about renewable energies being produced as primary energy sources - whether it’s green electrons, blue fuels, or biofuels, and those can be turned into methanol, ammonia, methane or bio-oils - and so these four pathways really provide an energy and technology way of decarbonising shipping. And our working hypothesis is that even if there are a lot of other opportunities out there, our job right now is to create confidence in these pathways so that we can get them going over the next five to ten years at scale; which requires a lot of ingenuity, business engineering, legal work and technology maturation and development. But it doesn’t actually require any radical scientific breakthroughs.
For more highlights on Nordic Maritime 2022 –
Nordic Maritime 2022: Green Transition to a Sustainable Ocean Economy - click here
Opening Address from MPA’s Chief Executive at Nordic Maritime 2022 - click here
