U.S. and Canada Launch Green Shipping Corridor for Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway
The United States and Canada have launched an initiative to establish a “green shipping corridor” for the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System.
Under the Initiative, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of State, and Transport Canada will work with state, provincial, local communities, private-sector and non-governmental leaders, and Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the United States to host consultations with ports and other stakeholders, with the goal of facilitating the establishment of a Great Lakes Green Shipping Corridor Network.
The green corridor was announced to coincide with the UN COP27 climate change conference taking place this week in Egypt and is one of several announced during the event.
Green corridors have been growing in popularity since last year’s COP26 conference in Glasgow. They are seen as a means to help the shipping industry decarbonize and involve setting up specific trade routes between major port hubs where zero-emission solutions are demonstrated and supported.
They are viewed as a key means of spurring the early adoption of zero-emission fuels and technologies that will put the shipping sector on a pathway to align with the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
During last year’s COP26, a coalition of countries launched the Clydebank Declaration, agreeing to create zero emissions shipping routes to speed up the decarbonization of the global ocean shipping industry, which accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions.
The binational Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System is a unique commercial waterway reaching into the heartland of North America, extending more than 2,000 miles and containing more than 110 ports. More than 200 million tons of cargo travel on the waterway each year.
“Through the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System Green Shipping Corridor Network Initiative, Canada and the United States will work with industry to help facilitate the establishment of green corridors throughout the region, including by convening stakeholders and contributing to assessments and analyses relating to alternative fuels and power options within the system,” the U.S. and Canada said in a joint statement.
The Green Shipping Corridor Network Initiative builds on the work launched under the “Joint Statement by the U.S. Department of Transportation and Transport Canada on the Nexus between Transportation and Climate Change,” issued February 25, 2021.
“The governments view the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway System Green Shipping Corridor Network Initiative as an important element in catalyzing development of the fuels and infrastructure needed to make the transition to low- and zero-emitting shipping, and, on both sides of the border, creating the jobs to make the fuel available and infrastructure development a reality. In the future the Initiative may expand to support green shipping corridors on U.S. and Canadian routes along both countries’ coasts, leverage experience from similar initiatives in other regions, and supplement regional and global efforts already underway,” the countries said.
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Potash, grain on the move at port
Shipments of potash are at multi-decade highs, and western Canadian grain movement is on target and has risen in volume at the Port of Thunder Bay.
“Grain is certainly stronger now than it was in the summer,” said Tim Heney, chief executive officer of the Thunder Bay Port Authority.
Grain costs climbed again early this month and Heney doesn’t think it will affect Canadian exports immediately.
“Depending on the markets. If the price is up, in eastern markets eventually move more grain in this direction but it’s likely we’ll not see much immediate impact because (the shipments) are already starting anyway,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to adjust how they move it that much because prices are set to the end of the year.”
As the fall grain harvest moves through the supply chain from Manitoba to the Thunder Bay port and onto its destination, local grain elevators handled 840,000 tonnes of wheat, canola, and other grains in October. Grain shipments for the month increased by 33 per cent compared to September and were eight per cent more than October of 2021.
The 2021 grain harvest suffered as a result of drought and high temperatures in the Prairies. This year’s increase in grain shipments reflects a more typical volume of grain at the port. Heney says there is an estimated 93.5 million tonnes of Prairie grain harvested this year, which equates to the third largest harvest on record.
Fertilizer shipments exported from Saskatchewan have levelled off at the Port.“The Russia and Ukraine situation has already affected exports quite dramatically,” Heney said. “They’re up in a big way in Thunder Bay this year. It’s kind of levelled off now, but it’s basically double what it was last year.”
Potash cargoes have also been strong throughout the 2022 shipping season with more than one million tonnes shipped through the port as of Oct. 31. Heney says that’s the most in more than 30 years. Potash is a vital component of fertilizer input and has been strained by global sanctions on Russian and Belarus products, which alone comprise 32 per cent of global production capacity.
Other shipments passing through the Thunder Bay port include pipe, which is used for the oil and gas industry in Alberta.
“There’s a lot of pipe this year,” Heney said. “There are three more ships of pipe still coming up.”
And he says they have “quite a bit” of steel rails from Europe stored at the terminal to be shipped out via rail cars. As for wind turbine components, Heney says that’s finished for the year and he expects shipments to pick up next year.
There are a couple more project-cargo shipments coming before the end of the year as well, he said.
They involve big components for either mines or mills out west. He added that they have seen a few shiploads of equipment come through this year that were destined for the Beardmore mining sector.
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