Sustainable icenavigation in Northern Baltic Sea

Baltic Rim Economies

Jarkko Toivola,
Head of Maritime Unit,
Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency,
Finland

Writer hold the position of Head of Maritime unit in Finnish Transport and Infrastructure Agency (FTIA), the authority responsible to organize icenavigation for merchant maritime traffic to and from Finland. This role includes arranging and management of icebreaker services, setting of ice restrictions, co-operation with neighboring countries icenavigation authorities and participating to development of related regulation.

History

Icebreaking services to Finland has existed since 1890, providing active assistance to passage of merchant vessel through ice into Finnish ports. Initially only in lighter ice conditions and only to more southern ports, but from mid-seventies, even to the northernmost ports of Bay of Bothnia and Eastern Bay of Finland were kept open year around. This development based also to ice class of merchant vessels, which provided more regulated risk management and possibility of insurance coverage to ship owners.

Fundamentals of Northern Baltic Sea Icenavigation system and related challenges

  • Varying winter on first year ice regions. In order to assure safe, reliable and efficient maritime trade, the whole system must be dimensioned also for harder ice conditions, even with large and even heavily ridged ice areas and ice coverage down to Central Baltic Sea.
  • Ice and other METOCEAN information. The severity of any ongoing winter can only be judged at end of February or even later. On the short, operational term reliability and accuracy, the ice and METOCEAN information is adequately accurate only for 3-5 days ahead, which is too short for any commercial decisions, but assures frontline safety of maritime traffic.
  • Ice classes of Merchant vessels, including independent ice going capacity and strength to tolerate iceloads. These are different things, first being an issue for the icenavigation system performance and second a pure safety issue. Independent ice going capacity of merchant vessels is constantly deteriorating due to merchant vessels adaptation to tightening emission regulation. By the laws of physics, everything to improve ice going is contrary to fuel efficiency in open water.
  • Icebreaker capacity. Number and type/size of icebreakers especially suited to Baltic operations is one of the key factors. Fleet of icebreakers used in Baltic Sea is ageing. Due to trend of wider merchant vessels with lesser and lesser independent ice going capacity, even with the general trend of lighter winters, lack of adequate icebreaking capacity is a high risk to reliable and efficient maritime transport system to Northern Baltic Sea ports.
  • Management of assistance operations, information flow for all related parties. Efficient management of data and information via FIN-SWE common online IBNet icebreaking management system assures optimization of assistances. Biggest potential, but also challenge for further improvements, is the accuracy and reliable lengthening of ice and METOCEAN predictions.
  • Size of merchant vessels, traffic flows, required accuracy of shipping schedules. All these set higher and higher requirements to icenavigation system, to assure economically and environmentally efficient and competitive maritime transport.

“Golden age” of icenavigation in Baltic Sea and present trend

From seventies until millennium, new IB’s and optimization towards better ice going capability of merchant vessels were the main trend and fuel consumption was not an issue.

Since then, the slow deterioration of system performance versus competitiveness required by industries, has taken place. One of the main drivers, even before environmental regulation, was the increasing of fuel costs as part of the total freight cost. Merchant fleet renewal rate is slow, as lesser cargo carrying capacity and worse fuel economy, compared to pure open water vessels, diminish resale value of high iceclass vessels to other regions.

Development trends and possible solutions to maintain system performance and improve sustainability

Although the winters are getting milder, the variation between winters remain. To assure efficient and sustainable transport system, admitting reducing independent ice going of merchant vessels, an adequate icebreaking capacity has to be maintained.

To make right decisions related to icebreaker renewal, icebreaking authorities and Aalto University are further developing icenavigation simulation that can model changing trade patterns, different ice conditions and realistic ice going performance of different vessels. Results will also help to minimize total emissions from maritime transports.

Availability of alternate fuels and implementing them to vessels used to icenavigation, is also a solution, though challenged by the slow renewal rate of both icebreaker and merchant fleet increases. On a long-term, only e-fuels provide adequate volumes of energy, but the needed amount of fossil free electricity at reasonable price is yet in the quite distant future.

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