Ports Leading the Way on Mitigation and Resilience

By Air, Land, and Sea: Navigating the Climate Future
Find out more about the briefings in this series below:
Part 1	Ports Leading the Way on Mitigation and Resilience
Part 2	After COVID: A Lower Carbon Future for Commercial Aviation
Part 3	The State of Play for Public Transit
Overview of the transportation series

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing series on climate mitigation and adaptation in the transportation sector. The series covered ports, aviation, and public transit.

U.S. ports, which are critical infrastructure for international trade and local economies, are vulnerable to sea level rise, erosion, storm surge, and flooding exacerbated by climate change. This briefing featured two port systems that are leading the way to adapt to climate impacts while reducing port greenhouse gas emissions. Joshua Berger, Governor Inslee’s Maritime Sector Lead and the chair and founder of Washington Maritime Blue, discussed Washington State’s collaborative effort to build a sustainable blue economy. The Maryland Port Administration's Jill Lemke and Kristen Keene discussed specific adaptation and resilience projects at the Port of Baltimore—including projects that have already been tested by extreme weather impacts.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

 

Joshua Berger, Founder and Board Chair, Washington Maritime Blue; Governor’s Maritime Sector Lead, Washington State Department of Commerce

• The idea of a “blue economy” encompasses sustainability, clean energy, environmental awareness, ecological health, and community resilience and equity in the maritime and ocean space.
• The maritime industry is a $37 billion economic driver for Washington state. The sector is diverse and interdependent and creates living-wage jobs. Washington has the fourth largest container gateway in the United States, the largest ferry system in the United States, and manages one of the largest sustainable fisheries in the United States (in the Bering Sea). The state has major facilities for ocean science, research, and workforce development.
• According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the “blue economy” will double to $3 trillion by 2030, but only if it is focused on “innovation and sustainability.”
• Washington state developed the first and only U.S. statewide plan for the “blue economy” in January 2019. It was created by Governor Jay Inslee and developed through an advisory council and 18 months of stakeholder consultation. Its elements include low-carbon industry, scientific innovation, workforce development, and public-private partnerships.
• Ocean/maritime clusters increasingly operate on what Berger calls a “quadruple helix” model, with collaborations between industry, the government and public sector, academia, and workforce and community organizations. “Washington Maritime Blue” was formed a year ago around this model and now has nearly a hundred members. It conducts marketing and communications, networking events, workforce events focused on women and people of color, and programs focused on attracting capital and investments.
• Washington has adopted a model from Norway, Portugal, France, and Japan called a “Joint Industry Project” that drives investment. Washington state has used this to develop zero-emission fast ferries and drive ferry electrification. It relies on funding drawn from multiple sources. The Zero Emission Fast Foil Ferry project has relied on funds from the Federal Transit Authority, local ports, and private investors. Other projects include a green hydrogen project to create a generator for ships to plug into at the pier, a whale report alert system, and a COVID-19 early detection system for fisheries and maritime applications.
• Venture capital does not generally flow to the maritime sector, but philanthropic and public funding can “de-risk” these projects.
• Projects are diverse, so the types of capital they use should be broad and diverse as well. This makes the “cluster organization” of collaboration across many entities a useful model.
• Washington’s “Maritime Blue Innovation Accelerator” received over 100 applications and chose 11 start-up companies to support.

 

Jill Lemke, Manager of Strategic Planning and Special Projects, Maryland Port Administration (MPA), Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT)

• The Maryland Port Administration (MPA) is not an independent port authority but is underneath the umbrella of the Maryland Department of Transportation. The Port of Baltimore was founded in 1706 and is older than the city itself. The Port of Baltimore is a complex mix of public and private facilities across 45 miles of waterfront, including 23 private facilities and six MPA public terminals. Collaboration occurs frequently between the public and private sectors and from local to international levels.
• The Port of Baltimore is a nationally significant port. It generates 37,000 jobs in Maryland, of which 15,330 are direct port jobs. It pays $3.3 billion in wages and salaries and draws $395 million in state and local tax revenue. The Port’s average annual salary is 9.5 percent higher than the statewide average wage. It ranks in the top ten in the country for trade in autos, gypsum, and sugar.
• Marine terminals are water dependent and susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Water levels have been rising for the last 100 years because of sea level rise and land subsidence. In 2010, Maryland conducted a climate change vulnerability assessment and developed a three-pronged approach to identify and address vulnerabilities. First, migrate: move terminal functions off of the floodplain whenever feasible. Second, elevate: if feasible, design new MPA facilities to be 2 feet above hundred-year flood elevation. Third, mitigate: reinforce and/or strengthen facilities for weather or flood damage.
• The Port considers resilience for all capital project designs. It is identifying potential resilience partnerships with federal, state, and local partners. Finally, it is investigating electric and micro-grid improvements, redundancies, and emergency power generation options.
• The Port is vulnerable to a number of climate risks: extreme rain events; extreme temperatures; high winds; snow, ice, and hail events; and increased sedimentation in the channel. It currently focuses on sea level rise and flooding because more information is available on those issues to inform decision-making.
• A stormwater vault at the Dundalk Marine Terminal is designed to hold large amounts of water from extreme rain events. The Fairfield Marine Terminal (FMT) Wet Basin stormwater management system was funded by a TIGER grant from the federal government and enabled the elevation of some important assets.
• Dundalk Marine Terminal covers 575 acres and is the largest marine terminal at the Port. The Terminal cannot be elevated and is leased to customers. It mostly handles forest products. The MPA is improving its resilience by building marine berths, adding a new stormwater culvert, stormwater pumps, backfill preventers, and a 32-inch sea curb to prevent storm surge overflowing. It is a $36 million project slated for construction over several years.
• The Port is also examining its environmental footprint. Between 2012 and 2016, cargo increased 10 percent but overall emissions dropped 19 percent. In 2016, CO2 emissions specifically were 23 percent lower than 2012 levels. These reductions are due to the modernization of cargo handling equipment, the replacement of older dray trucks, and operational changes. MPA also does flood and erosion mitigation projects outside of the terminal. It recently partnered with Anne Arundel County to conduct shoreline restoration at the Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center, creating 400 feet of living shoreline.

 

Kristen Keene, Innovative Reuse Program Manager, Maryland Port Administration, Maryland Department of Transportation

• Major shipping channels are maintained at a 50-foot depth. Maintaining this depth keeps channels safe and the Port competitive. The Maryland Port Administration (MPA) partners with the Army Corps of Engineers on these projects to dredge 5 million yards of sediment yearly from Port channels.
• Space in upland containment facilities is very limited, leading to a need for “innovative reuse” and “beneficial use”—that is, using dredged sediments on land or in water. Dredged sediment has been used for habitat development, remedial capping material, and landfill cover.
• Poplar Island had lost all but five acres to erosion and sea level rise by the 1990s. Using dredged sediment, MPA and the Army Corps restored the site to a 1,715-acre island containing 776 acres of tidal wetlands, 829 acres of upland habitat, and 110 acres of open water embayment.
• Poplar Island will soon be fully restored, so MPA is planning the Mid-Chesapeake Bay island restoration project, which will use 90-95 million cubic yards of dredged sediment to restore remote island habitat and provide shoreline protection and resilience for Dorchester County and its property owners.

 

Question & Answer Session

 

To what extent are ports sharing information about and collaborating on adaptation and resilience efforts? Are there any federal resources facilitating this?

• Berger: There are a number of port associations looking to lead that work. The Maritime Administration (MARAD) does a particularly good job, particularly in terms of sharing information on what federal resources are coming through MARAD, but also through BUILD grants and TIGER grants.
   
• Lemke: We work closely with the American Association of Port Authorities to share best practices and information, and to keep up on what is happening at the federal level. We have partnerships with federal agencies, which also serve other ports and make connections with them that way. Those agencies include the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and MARAD, to name a few. We also participate in information exchanges like this one and others sponsored by universities and research organizations.
   
• Keene: We also participate in the Western Dredging Association (WEDA), which brings together many state and federal partners in the maritime community, and allows us an opportunity to collaborate with other ports and federal agencies and learn about advancements, what other ports are doing, and how we can emulate those activities across the board.
   
• Berger: The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) both have been leading on this and helping us nationally to define the blue economy. We partnered with DOE and ran a blue forum called R&D for Marine Energy Solutions. It was an opportunity for all the federal research institutions to engage with industry. DOE has led a lot of that with national labs, such as the Pacific Northwest National Lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Sandia as well. There is some leadership coming from the national level to help us define the blue economy. We just do not yet have the mechanisms within the federal government because the blue economy is horizontal. It is in NOAA, it is in DOE, it is in EPA, it is in MARAD. It is hard to understand where those agencies can work together, how do they join together in funding opportunities? We were fortunate enough to be awardees of the Economic Development Administration's (EDA) Build-to-Scale grant supporting cluster innovations in the blue economy, and that was jointly funded by the DOE and EDA.

 

What are the next steps on the horizon for electrification at ports? What barriers exist now preventing electrification efforts?

• Lemke: We have studied electrification and looked at feasibility. We just got a grant from the Maryland Energy Administration to study the feasibility of microgrids. We have looked at shore power. Because of the nature of our port, ships are not staying at port very long. We have a very efficient port, so the cost-benefit analysis of shore power was not favorable: the ships are not in port long enough to justify powering down and plugging in. We are a landlord port—we provide the infrastructure that our customers need. So organizing and working with our customer base, the shipping companies and cargo owners, to address energy needs is a longer term effort that we are hoping to embark on through our strategic planning process.
   
• Berger: This is a really key topic for us in Washington for a number of reasons. We have done a tremendous amount of work looking at the air quality impacts of our major terminals, particularly on disadvantaged communities. We are quickly trying to electrify and implement electrification of our ferry system. We are in the process of converting our two largest vessels and building five new all-electric ferries. These are 2,000-passenger ferries that are moving across Puget Sound every 35 minutes. And when they come into port, they need 10 megawatts of power for nine minutes every 35 minutes. How do you have a grid that can support that kind of power? So, we are working closely with various utilities. For the 25 routes, we have eight different utilities we have to engage with. It is going to require energy storage solutions, microgrid solutions, and new technology solutions. Our state is investing in some of that and we are looking at various different federal sources. We were also fortunate enough to get a good amount of the Volkswagen settlement dollars that we are using to electrify our ferries.
   
• Lemke: We have Volkswagen funds as well. We have been working with our partners to replace or repower the motors of cargo-handling equipment. All of our cranes are now electric. The new cranes coming in 2021 will be electric. The state of Maryland is also part of a Northeast Corridor initiative to study the electrification of the freight network in terms of electric vehicles, including freight delivery vehicles.
   
• Berger: This is a global effort. We have multiple carriers, multiple operators, multiple terminal operators. How do you just agree on what type of shore power plug you are going to use? You can imagine the amount of coordination to bring together all those different manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), asking them to leave their business managers at home, and bring engineers, and help us determine what the shore power plug of the future is going to be. That is a challenge in itself. That is part of why we are so excited about the use of something independent like a cluster organization. We have every major OEM: ABB, Wärtsilä, Siemens, as part of this organization. They recognize they have to come up with standards together and they can use this cluster organization as a place to come together and create standards together.

 

How do you work with your neighbors in waterfront and port areas, people who are trying to develop?

• Lemke: I came to the Port of Baltimore from the Baltimore City Department of Planning, where I focused on waterfront development, waterfront planning, and industrial zoning. We, the port community, partnered with the city of Baltimore to develop zoning protections for port properties with deep-water assets, acknowledging that those deep-water assets cannot be replaced. We have land use protections in place for those properties in exchange for a more balanced protection of areas that do not have deep-water assets. That is one part of our puzzle and we are continuing to work on those protections as well as protecting the areas around our freight networks, so land surrounding our rail and highway access points is also protected and not cut off because of a new development or other implementation policies. In addition, we have a very robust relationship with our surrounding communities. We learned the importance of community outreach the hard way, after one of our communities took us to the Supreme Court back in the ‘80s. As a result of concerns about dredge material placement facilities, we have increased our community engagement and community outreach process and have built relationships with our surrounding communities, to the point that they now write letters of support whenever we are seeking grants from the federal government or others. We have made our surrounding communities our partners.
   
• Keene: At the Port of Baltimore, we have a very robust stakeholder outreach and engagement program. We have 10 advisory committees that consist of public and private partners as well as citizen stakeholders, which we use to communicate with communities, inform them about our projects, and seek their feedback. We basically try to bring them along with us every single step of the way, beginning with siting a project, design, engineering, all the way through implementation and subsequent monitoring. The aforementioned court case was a result of citizens and communities in the state of Maryland not having a very good understanding of dredge material and the quality of the sediment and being very fearful of the sediment. In recent years, we have worked to create a paradigm shift in which we no longer view dredged material as a spoil but as a substance of value. Today, we actually have communities asking us for sediment to use for living shoreline projects and the revitalization of recreational assets. We really have come such a long way but none of that would have been possible without a robust outreach and stakeholder engagement program.

 

How does the long economic lifespan and substantial capital cost of port infrastructure constrict the flexibility of ports to adopt policies advancing greater resilience to climate change impacts, and are there any new design concepts under development to address this reality?

• Berger: It is challenging to hold this balance because, one, we know this infrastructure is the infrastructure of the past, not the infrastructure of the future which we know we are going to need to meet the goals we have regionally nationally or globally. Two, these are very long spans. I use the case of vessels: if we are going to have a decarbonized shipping system by the year 2050, these are 25-30-year assets and when you take into account construction and financing mechanisms, we have less than five to eight years to find and commercialize the fuel of the future so we can meet our target. It's the same with port infrastructure. I look at the Norwegian NOx fund. It is an interesting mechanism, as it is essentially a tax on nitrous oxides, but those dollars are brought back to the industry to invest in new mitigation technologies. So, it is a combination of dollars available, and having a regulatory approach that encourages investment and brings industry forward. It is not easy, but I think it is certainly doable.
   
• Lemke: The port industry is very competitive. Recognizing that adding resilience into all our capital projects adds cost, we have to make the business case for why that is important. The funding issue is very difficult for us. As a transportation business unit under the Maryland Department of Transportation, we compete for funds with the Transit Administration, the Aviation Administration, state highways, and the Maryland Transit Authority. We struggle to find funds to implement our projects, that is why we use a lot of federal grants. We also have unique and innovative public-private partnerships. Our Seagirt Marine Terminal is our dedicated container terminal, and that terminal is operated under a public-private partnership agreement with Ports America Chesapeake. So, we partner with the private sector to help make those investments in our infrastructure feasible, and the projects improve the relationship between the terminal and its customers. And it is a global issue, we compete with other ports for business, which is why the business case is so important.

 

 

Highlights compiled by Joseph Glandorf