URSABLOG: Linking Capital With Ideas

On Thursday, I went to my first three-dimensional forum for a long time, thanks to a kind invitation from Capital Link. I can’t say in person, or live, because thankfully over the last two years or so Zoom and Teams and other meeting applications have kept us all connected. But, as I found out, online seminars – for all of their ability to connect people around the world – have distinct disadvantages to the physical versions.

Of course, one of the main reasons I went to the forum was to meet people and network, and at first I had to admit that the experience was a little disorienting. The large amount of people milling around meant I had to relearn very quickly the skills I seem to have lost in the last two years: putting names to faces, making a mental note to speak to people that I know, introducing myself to people I don’t know but would like to know, and generally making connections through three-dimensional space in competition with a load of other people doing the same thing. But the joy of actually sitting down and listening to people talk, in person, was the most surprising and refreshing aspect of the forum for me.

The ability to switch off or do other things in a physical conference, whilst possible, is not as easy as when you are online. You cannot turn off your camera, and although you can stop listening, or start browsing your mobile phone, actually talking to other people or getting a coffee means physically leaving the room. This leads to the rather novel experience of giving a speaker or a panel your full attention, and listening to stuff that perhaps you would have not chosen to. I therefore sat in on a couple of very thought provoking and very different panel discussions which I may have otherwise have ignored online, one on short sea electric powered ferries and another on ESG.

As many regular readers will know, I am not a particular enthusiast of ‘blue sky thinking’ as far as zero emission discussions are concerned, and short sea shipping, whilst interesting, is not my area of expertise, so I was pleasantly surprised to be present when the charming and wryly funny George Dimopoulos moderated the panel discussion with the rather unpromising – at least for me – title of “Short Sea Shipping – Leading the Green Revolution to Zero.” It was made all the more interesting by the thoughts of the rather paradoxically named Frode Overland Andersen , the Norwegian Ambassador to Greece and Cyprus. Having become used to rather bland speeches from the diplomatic corps and friendship and co-operation, and in particular being frustrated by the various British diplomatic pushes talking up Maritime Britain, or worse Maritime London (hint: you need ships to be a maritime nation) here was someone who not only knew what he was talking about, but was also enthusiastic yet pragmatic about its prospects.

I will keep it brief, but basically the Norwegian government has led a push to convert their smaller diesel-powered coastal ferries to be replaced by electric powered vessels as soon as possible. As a result, Norway is now home to three quarters of the almost 300 vessels that run fully or partly on batteries. They have almost sixty fully electric small car ferries in operation, built on the back of the government awarding tenders on specific routes for a minimum of ten years duration. Most of these ferries are constructed using lighter carbon-fibre hulls, which improves the energy efficiency, but as the process develops, innovation improves. For the batteries alone, a few years ago they weighed around 12 kilograms per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of power; now they’re at around 8kg per kWh and could get to?6kg/kWh soon.

These developments are obviously of great interest to Greece, which also has a long coastline and many islands, and also has a large network of aging and thirsty ferries (nicknamed παντο?φλε?, or slippers) that could be replaced using the technology that already exists, and the skills that Greece has as much in abundance as Norway: innovation, maritime, shipbuilding, energy, naval architecture and design, entrepreneurship. They are glaring dissimilarities in political cultures and temperament between Greece and Norway of course – a factor mentioned with resignation by the Greek panellists – but refreshingly enough, Mr Andersen didn’t seem to think that was a permanent barrier, perhaps a case of hope over experience. And as we say here, hope dies last.

For any modern Greek politician wanting to make a name for themselves (and there were more than a couple at the forum), this idea could press many buttons: island support, regeneration, manufacturing, tech and innovation, sustainable electricity generation, tourism (and green at that), not to mention exports and wealth generation. I share the panellists’ scepticism, but I was glad I listened to the discussion, and it filled a few gaps in my knowledge too, and await with interest to see how some of these technologies and be developed into some aspects at least of deep sea shipping.

The second discussion that caught my ear, was Environmental, Social, and Governance or ESG. Again, this would not normally have got my attention, because I am suspicious of greenwashing, and probably political correctness if was to be honest, but this was very, very interesting, and an insight into how we do business in the future. I will not go over the environmental stuff, as it is mostly familiar to us now, except to say that cargo owners, and charterers will be having far more of a say in the type of ships employed in the future. What struck me the most was often under-considered S & G parts of the acronym.

Maybe this was unconsciously inspired by the fact that three of the six panellists were women, which shouldn’t really be worth mentioning, but it is so rare, that it made me pay attention more, especially as it was not commented on at all, but taken as fact. Maybe I am making too much of a deal out of it, but having attended WISTA conferences where the majority of speakers were men – and didn’t resist the temptation to mansplain, at length – I found this a very welcome change. And as one of the speakers, Kiara Konti , pointed out it is the social and governance sides – and one assumes the auditing of it – that carry equal weight in the ESG equation. This is not just a matter of box ticking and social media promoting for listed companies, but is an important factor in accessing funding, and getting employment contracts, and of course the vetting of companies by charterers and other stakeholders that will take on increasing importance. And before you start moaning about political correctness gone mad, it is the tanker industry – traditionally the most testosterone driven part of shipping – that is most heavily vetted. If they can do it we all can.

If this changes the management culture of shipping companies, big and small, I am all for it. I have too many stories already from friends in the industry, and students embarking on a career into it, where out of date, abusive, manipulative and just plain misogynist practices persist, simply because “shipping is a conservative, opaque industry, resistant to change”. No it is not, because the best example of perfect competition that exists in a global market cannot but adapt to change. I do not need to mention, I hope, that restricting employment prospects for women because they could have children in the next 20 years, or the insistence of wearing of high heels or other ‘feminine’ attire, or the more serious abuses of power for sex are not good for business. #Metoo means all of us and is not just a Twitter trend. All of this was unsaid during the panel discussion, but like all good discussions it led to these other thoughts, ones that I don’t think are entirely irrelevant.

In fact, both these issues were ones that I had not thought about for a time, and I think in part this was because I have not really been out in the three-dimensional world for a long time. The problem with isolation, and by extension social media and the internet, is that we only see and read self-reinforcing information, filtered for us by cookies and algorithms. The days of sitting down to read a newspaper, physically, are mostly gone: many of my students look at me in wonder when I tell them that it is worthwhile to read stuff that hasn’t been chosen for you, but nonetheless unexpectedly interests you. The Capital Link forum, for me at least, reminded me that there is stuff out there that I can easily dismiss, ignore or forget about with a click of a mouse or a swipe of the finger, that is nonetheless interesting, important, and profitable. I am now looking forward to Posidonia and other opportunities for discussion with much greater enthusiasm.

Simon Ward

www.ursashipbrokers.gr