Ships diverted from Red Sea pump out more emissions in bid to speed up

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Emissions from container ships, car carriers and dry bulk ships diverting from the Red Sea are set to increase as much as 70 per cent as vessel operators increase speeds to compensate for the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope.

Leading container ship operators including Denmark’s AP Møller-Maersk, and Hapag-Lloyd are among companies which have increased vessel speeds in an attempt to minimise the extra sailing time for ships that would normally use the Suez Canal.

The increased emissions are a result of vessels being rerouted because of the attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Most shipping companies have been taking the longer route since November, which at normal speeds adds between 10 days and two weeks to a container ship’s voyage from Asia to Europe.

The speed increases follow nearly a decade of “slow steaming” by most shipping companies in a bid to economise on fuel use and minimise their carbon emissions.

Maersk, operator of the world’s second-biggest container ship fleet, said it had “suspended” slow-steaming on some services to catch up on “some of the delay” from sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.

Hapag-Lloyd, the fifth-biggest container line, said speeds had generally increased and that it was accelerating ships when necessary to overcome congestion delays.

Shipping analysts at Sea Intelligence said that shipping line customers were “caught between a rock and a hard place” by the operators’ decisions to increase vessel speeds.

“If they want to move their cargo, they will have to accept a significant increase in their carbon emissions,” the company wrote in a note.

Simon Heaney, senior manager in container research at London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants, said container ships in recent years had been operating at 14 knots, the equivalent of about…