A review of sustainable sea-transport for Oceania: Providing context for renewable energy shipping for the Pacific

Policy and financing—why is sea transport currently invisible in the search for a low carbon future for Pacific Island Countries?

“…Research, analysis, and development of commercial models, especially for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), lags far behind research and promotion of other renewable energy applications especially for electricity generation. However, past and current research is clear that such technology offers strong potential to both reduce PIC reliance on imported fossil fuel and revolutionize PIC shipping (Nuttall, 2012(Nuttall, , 2013Nuttall et al, 2014). Current domestic shipping, although often financially marginal and employing aged asset, maintains sufficient control of the industry to continue to use fossil fuels because there is a lack of sufficient incentive to adopt new technologies and a lack of commercially demonstrated alternatives (Prasad et al, 2013).…”

“…It offers a potential future where fleets of smaller but more sustainable new ships can replace current single, aged, large vessel operations. Realization of this requires economic analysis and practical demonstration of commercially viable models if up-take on any scale is to be achieved (Nuttall et al, 2014). Renewable energy use for sea transport has almost no profile currently in policy and strategic instruments at local, regional, or development agency levels and is invisible in funding initiatives.…”

“…A small number of critical experiments occurred during the 1973-1986 oil crisis (Nuttall, 2013;Nuttall et al, 2014). They are important to understand because they clearly demonstrated savings in fuel and costs are available at reasonable price, but also because of the process that evolved following the delay in investing in research and trialing at the outset of the crisis.…”

“…Alternatives to current fossil fuel-powered sea transport is a "missing link" in current PIC policies and approaches to renewable energy and efforts to reduce reliance on imported fuels (Nuttall et al, 2014). Renewable energy-assisted shipping, while often using known and proven wind, solar, and biofuel…”

Advancing City Sustainability via Its Systems of Flows: The Urban Metabolism of Birmingham and Its Hinterland

“…However, there are few studies that have endeavoured to cover all three pillars of sustainability together. In the case of transport the focus is often on a specific mode (e.g., rail [21], road [22], sea [23], or air [24]), rather than looking at the transport system as a whole.…”