Kiel Port Prize honours sustainable shipping
Source:transportweekly 2015-9-28 17:35:00
The traditional annual social get-together of the port business community-the "Sprottenback"-is the setting for the award of the Port of Kiel Prize. This year it has gone to Niclas Martensson, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Stena Line Group. In a speech honouring the winner, the Managing Director of the PORT OF KIEL (SEEHAFEN KIEL GmbH & Co. KG) Dr Dirk Claus praised the strong commitment of the Stena Line and Niclas Martensson to the development of sustainability and environmental compatibility in Baltic ferry shipping. "The Stena Line is the first shipping company in the world to put a ferry ship into operation which is driven by eco-friendly methanol", he noted. "By retrofitting the "Stena Germanica", which serves the Kiel - Gothenburg route, Stena Line is making a positive impact on the environment and is treading new and exemplary paths within the ferry sector", Claus added. The retrofit work, which involved the conversion of the engines and fuel system on the ship, was carried out early this year at Remontowa Shipyard by Stena Teknik in co-operation with the Wartsila concern. The total cost of the conversion, which was subsidised by the EU under the Motorways of the Seas programme, was about euro 22 million.
Methanol can be manufactured from natural gas, biomass or CO2 and used as a fuel in many and varied forms. It is an organic chemical compound and the simplest representative of the alcohol family of substances. In normal conditions it is a clear, colourless, flammable, light and volatile liquid. Because it is easy to handle, it is particularly suited to the transport sector, but has not been utilised as a fuel for large ship engines until now. Compared to conventional fuels, the use of methanol reduces sulphur emissions by 99%, nitrogen by 60%, soot particles by 95% and carbon dioxide by at least 25%. According to Dirk Claus "by using methanol Stena Line is not only meeting the stringent environmental regulations which exist in Baltic shipping, but, in addition, making a significant contribution to climate protection". Were this fuel to be obtained increasingly in future from biomasses rather than from natural gas, then shipping would already be very close to meeting the EU's targeted 'zero emission' level.
The Kiel - Gothenburg route handles 400,000 passengers every year and also transports some 90,000 cargo consignments (mainly trucks, trailers and containers) along with the same number of cars. The route is served by two of the biggest RoPax ferries in the Baltic, the "Stena Germanica", which is of 51,837 gt, 240 m long and with a loading capacity of 4,000 lane metres, and also the "Stena Scandinavica". The ships leave port at 6.45 pm every evening and reached their destination port the following morning at 9.15 am. "The Kiel - Gothenburg route is a successful motorway of the sea"said Dirk Claus. "Because it runs mainly parallel to the coast, it attracts large volum's of traffic from the roads onto environmentally friendly shipping every single day", he added.
From the Schwedenkai Terminal in Kiel there is a direct rail cargo connection to numerous national and international destinations. The intermodal services now being offered for trailer transport from Sweden to Italy via Kiel are becoming increasingly popular. Last year more than 26,000 consignments were transferred from the ferries onto rail in Kiel for hinterland on-transport by rail.