Never too old to learn... or to get excited about an idea

I had the pleasure of attending today's 'America's Blue Highway' conference on the campus of SUNY Maritime in the beautiful Bronx. Okay, I am biased. I am a Schuyler grad, class of '94 and my father grew up in the Bronx. My grandparents lived there during my college years. The campus looked fantastic with an enthusiastic crowd of over 250 big names in attendance.

While I have spent my whole professional life dealing with the international tanker trade, I was rarely exposed to this topic. From what I saw during the AM session, the conference was an eyeopener, with many truly innovative things happening in this short sea shipping space. I would have liked to stay for the entire conference but duty called, and I had to return to CT to oversee the monthly CMA meeting.

There are a few salient points that jumped out to me:

There is a large environmental benefit to short sea shipping. A slide that was shown by Ed Whitmore of the Norfolk Tug Company noted that fuel consumption can be reduced by using the marine highway concept:

• A barge can move a ton of cargo 647 miles on a single gallon of fuel,
• Trains can move a ton of cargo 477 miles on a single gallon of fuel,
• For trucks that number is 145 miles. WOW

Projects take a long time. In the tanker or bulk space, one of the longest projects is newbuildings, which take about 2-3 years. On the port level, Derek Veenhof of Covanta (Waste to Energy company), said that his project with the city took well over a decade to conclude and will last over thirty years. This is an entire career!

Shipping can be something that is more relevant to those outside of the shipping markets. Bob Kunkel was speaking at Farm Aid this year and his project, Harbor Harvest is using the Marine Highway concept to help family farms in CT reach a wider audience. The idea is to bring food from CT to NYC or LI via a special concept vessel that is being build. This trip can be done in a fraction of the time that it would take a truck to go from CT to LI via highways. The idea of fresh, local, organic food is something that is marketable beyond shipping, yet shipping could be a huge part of. Oh, add to this the zero emissions engine installed on the vessel and that adds a ton of bonus points.

Overall a great morning and I am sure for those that stayed, a great day. Admiral Alfultis, John Arntzen, Dr Joe Hoffman and everyone involved did a great job in organizing this program.