Aspiring to Perspire
We all know what the finance folk mean when they talk about it. But what about sweating assets for sustainability?
A couple of weeks back, we were delighted at being invited to sit in on an update from Portsmouth International Port (PIP) on the progress of its SEA CHANGE Shore Power Infrastructure project. Since we first posted on the Port way back in February 2022, we’ve always been dead keen to hear about things sustainability-related going on there—not least because much of The Green Edge is written, recorded and edited within sight of the myriad traffic passing through its watery gates.
Images: TGE. (Note: RN and Wightlink vessels use the same water but have separate bases, which are both close to PIP but are not part of the Port itself).
And it seems that SEA CHANGE—which is building the UK’s first multi-berth, multi-user, multi-frequency shore power system across PIP’s three busiest berths and will allow for simultaneous powering of multiple vessels, with different AC frequencies, voltages and shore connectors—is going swimmingly well. It’s all on track to be fully operational by April 2025, ready in time to provide battery charging and hotelling loads to two new LNG/Hybrid-electric vessels currently being built for Brittany Ferries. What this all means is that when the two new ships—and, hopefully, others soon to follow from the likes of Virgin Voyages—manouevre in and out of Portsmouth Harbour, they will be able to do so solely on battery power. And since the prevailing wind over Portsmouth blows from the harbour over the city, that can only be a good thing, can’t it.
So, if shore power is such a great thing (which we have no doubt it is) which other ports around the country are doing it—and if not, why not? After all, with the shipping sector needing to make deep cuts in its carbon pollution this decade, and with shore power being a sure-fire way of cutting CO2 at berth, as well as reducing local air and noise pollution, it seems like a ‘no-regrets’ option, doesn’t it?
Well, as a presentation from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research told us during the same meetup, sticking in shore power all over the place is not quite so straightforward. The Centre’s own research in 2020 identified a raft of cultural, financial and policy barriers, which in the UK at least have not been fully sorted out yet. The bottom line is, as Tyndall said back in 2021:
Shore-power projects are difficult and expensive, with few if any going ahead worldwide without Government support. And ports are often constrained by lack of energy network capacity in their area—and complex regulation of the energy system.
Source: Tyndall
That last point about access to grid capacity is a biggie, and as we heard from one of the other presentations in the meetup—this time from MSE International—there just isn’t the grid capacity for some ports. Like Portland, for example, where its grid connection won’t be reinforced until 2035 at the earliest. Hence, initiatives like SSEN’s SeaChange (there seems to be a lot of different projects around with the same name here), which is winning cash to build tools for ports needing extra grid capacity, to look at how they could be matched up with the requirements of other things going on around them that might also be queueing up for a grid upgrade.
The shipping sector is a new, large electricity consumer, and the UK’s target of achieving zero-emissions shipping by 2050 will lead to a substantial increase in the demand for electricity across the maritime industry. The location of ports and harbours means they are found at the edges of the electricity grid, and this can pose challenges when it comes to getting the required power to where it’s needed.
Source: SSEN
Image: First Bus
So, mixed fortunes there on the shore power front. But then the meetup got into a fascinating discussion about sweating assets. This was all triggered by a presentation by First Bus, who started off by telling us about all the rapid charging stations they’ve been setting up all over the place for their growing fleets of electric buses. There are over 550 individual stations live right now, with more planned for next year…
Image: First Bus
But here’s the thing: for the most part, the chargers are only hooked up to First Bus’s buses at night. During daytime, what with them being secure sites with fast charging capacities, large bays and long cables, and a broad geographic footprint, they’re ideal for other big electric wheelie-type things to pop in during the day and take advantage of the juice on offer. Which seems to be exactly what’s occurring, and First Bus offered a couple of case studies—EV charging partnerships with Open Reach and DPD—as evidence.
So, well done there, First Bus. And that got us thinking: there must be lots of promising avenues across a wide range of industries and sectors for sweating assets in ways that contribute to sustainability. We already heard there about transportation companies investing in rapid chargers to meet their own fleet needs, and then renting out those assets during downtimes. Warehouses and logistics hubs must offer similar possibilities, especially since many of them are adopting renewables like solar panels or battery storage to power their operations sustainably. And what about manufacturing facilities sharing resources such as 3D printers, CNC machines, or specialized tooling during off-hours to help smaller companies access high-end equipment without heavy capital investment? Even office spaces can contribute, particularly those designed with sustainability in mind. Sustainable offices equipped with energy-efficient HVAC, lighting systems, and renewable energy sources could open their spaces as co-working hubs for neighbouring businesses or remote teams, particularly in regions where green-certified buildings are in demand.
There’s a skills-as-an-asset sweating part to this too. With specialised physical assets often come specialist skills, and even with assets that are becoming relatively common—like EV chargers—we can well imagine how skills like high-voltage management might become people assets worth sharing.
Taking this good sharing-economy thinking a little further, we could even imagine eMarketplace apps springing up, bringing together asset owners and asset-seekers into a kind of AirBnb ecosystem. AirCNC, anyone? Oh but hang on, this is already happening, we see, with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation telling us about and interesting Dutch initiative called Floow2; we have to say, though, that a glance at Floow2’s website seems to indicate that applications thus far seem to be more focused around casting off oversupply rather than actually sharing assets. Ho hum, perhaps we’re mistaken and someone will correct us.
This is all fun to speculate about, but in many cases we suspect it’s not so easy in practice. Lots of corporate assets are tied in to the competitiveness or specific knowhow attached to the owners, plus there’s the thorny question of how to arrange it so that the owners don’t turn around and say sorry, we actually need this kit today after all. For First Bus’s EV charging assets, that particular management problem seems fairly well-defined (and is, presumably, linked into service agreements with their EV charging partners), but what about a port responding to the movements of ships, with loads of charge needed for a liner, say, for a few hours at whatever time of day (or night) while the passengers are herded into buses to go ooh! and ahh! at Stonehenge or some other local attraction?
Still, all worth thinking about, and at the end of the meetup we could sense PIP starting to ponder what co-sharing uses might be found to sweat its bright shiny new shore power assets. As ever, we wish them all the best in their endeavours.