China Merchants Holdings International Co. Ltd. : To build a green and low-carbon port

Company profile
 
China Merchants Holdings International Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as the China Merchants International), is headquartered in Hong Kong and was listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1992. It was the first red chip company listed in Hong Kong (HKSE stock code: 0144), and was added in the Hang Seng Index in September 2004. Now the company is listed in the most important companies in Hong Kong.
 
China Merchants International now has become China's largest and world- leading port operator. It has established a well-organized port network group in China's major coastal hub ports. The ports invested by the company or invested and managed by it have covered the container hub ports in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo, Shanghai, Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin, Xiamen Bay and Zhanjiang, and it also successfully spread to ports in South Asia, Africa and other places. So far, China Merchants international has bought shares in over 20 ports and over 130 container berths. The company completes container throughput of more than 80 million teu, sharing more than thirty percent. Of market in mainland China.
 
Challenges
 
There are seven of top ten largest container ports in China. The numerous ships and freight transport goods promote economic development but also contribute to the air pollution surrounding the ports. As the facilities get fuel from oil, when loading and unloading goods during working process and ship dock, they will release a great deal of nitrogen oxides, sulfides, solid particles and greenhouse gases, causing serious environmental pollution problems. In addition, the fuel price fluctuations continue to impact the cost control ,so the energy structure have to be changed and energy conservation and emission reduction policies have to be implemented.
 
Solutions
 
Replacing oil with electricity innovatively to reduce dependency on fuel oil. Shekou Container Terminal, always shortened as SCT, under China Merchants Holdings International Co. Ltd. has initiated research on electricity for oil project targeted for rubber-tyred container gantry cranes since 2006 and proposed the world’s leading complete solutions to electricity for oil in container terminals with self-owned intellectual property right. During the implementation of the project, 91 gantry cranes, safety sliding contact lines of a total length of 18800 meters and 18 substations are built, covering 72 container terminals with an area of 560,000 m².
 
Pushing forward the development of shore power technology to save energy and reduce emission. The company built a power supply system for ships in berth 5 to 7 of SCT to supply electricity for arriving boats, which makes it possible to stop the use of auxiliary engines and to replace them with land electricity supplies, thus reducing pollution during the port of ships. The shore power technology includes two schemes, high voltage (6.6kV/60Hz) and low voltage (440V/60Hz). These two schemes share a frequency conversion power supply unit. Basically, mains supply of 10kV/50Hz is converted to power supply of 6.6kV/60Hz through the function of frequency conversion power supply unit, then the power supply of 6.6kV/60Hz is transmitted to shore power plugging boxes in the front of the berth (sea test track of bridge crane) through cables.
 
During the design, construction and supervision of the marine power supply system of SCT, the company selects domestic suppliers with rich project implementation experience, and aims to meet the specific needs of ocean going vessels of international container terminals, thus forming a most functional marine power supply system of the maxim capacity and reaching the international advanced level.
 
Adopting electric patrol cars to promote green patrol. In order to reduce pollution caused by exhaust of patrol cars, SCT introduced 10 BYD e6 blade electric vehicles as patrol cars to replace the previous diesel pickup trucks in 2010. The use of BYD blade electric vehicles not only reduces the consumption of oil, but also lowers the maintenance cost greatly.
 
Adopting LED illuminating lamps to reduce electricity cost. SCT keeps trying by installing electricity-saving appliances and light-sensitive controllers as well as controlling light sources by group to save energy, and finally determines to adopt low-power LED lamps at the ratio of 1:1 to substitute the existing traditional high-power metal halide lamps. Nearly RMB 8 million is invested in this project, and 471 sets of LED lamps of 430W are purchased and equipped to replace over 900 sets of traditional metal halide lamps of 1000W.
 
Conducting research on green supply chain to improve air quality in the Pearl River Delta. It has been proved by long-term practice that it is much cheaper to transport goods from the west of the Pearl River Delta to deep west port area by water carriage than by land carriage, and energy consumption per unit as well as emission is also less. Therefore, western Shenzhen ports of south China operation center has initiated research on a cleaner and more energy-saving sea transit transport mode since 2001. In 2013, south China port operation center launched the research project of water carriage for land carriage, which is conducive to improve air quality in the Pearl River Delta and to relieve regional congestion. The report of the water carriage for land carriage project has already been finished and passed a special review held by experts from the Ministry of Transport, the department of transport in Guangdong province and the transport committee of Shenzhen city.
 
Achievements
 
Social benefit
 
Fundamental changes in energy utilization structures reduce SCT’s dependency on fuel oil from 72% in 2008 to the current 24%. Carbon dioxide emission reduces by 30,000 tons and the carbon dioxide emission of single box decreases by 50%. After the implementation of electricity for oil project targeted for rubber-tyred container gantry cranes, the annual electricity consumption increases to 12 million kWh, whereas the emission of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide reduces by 28,000 tons, 123 tons and 110 tons respectively, and it greatly reduces noisy produced during the operation.
 
The shore power technology enables arriving ships to shut off auxiliary engines while in the port, which effectively reduces pollution to the air and noisy caused by auxiliary engines in operation, thus improving urban environmental quality. Since the implementation of BYD blade electric patrol car project, diesel consumption decreases by 45 tons and carbon dioxide emission reduces by 144 tons.
 
Economic benefit
 
The annual decreased amount of fuel oil of SCT equals to over 10,000 tons of standard coal, greatly reducing energy consumption. The implementation of electricity for oil project targeted for rubber-tyred gantry cranes can reduce diesel consumption by 11,000 tons, which means saving 11,000 tons of standard coal every year. It is estimated that if the price of oil is RMB 4.8 per liter and the price of electricity is RMB 1.15 per kWh, the operation cost of gantry cranes powered by mains supply will reduce by RMB 7, saving cost by 60%, and over RMB 25 million is saved for the company each year in terms of fuel cost.
 
The application of shore power technology guarantees arriving ships to stop the use of auxiliary engines while in the port, which greatly reduces the operation cost for ships berthing at port. According to practical calculation, 10 BYD blade electric cars can save around RMB 357,000 in terms of energy consumption. If maintenance fees are included, it can save RMB 649,000 together with the cost of energy consumption. The annual electricity consumption monitoring report of 2014 shows that after the introduction of LED energy-saving lamps, the whole electricity saving rate of this project reaches as high as 65%, about 1,170,000 kWh of electricity having been saved.
 
China Merchants International speeds up the research application and achievement transformation to introduce and popularize the new technology to more domestic and foreign counterparts. “Replacing oil with electricity” and “shore power project” both won the National Port Science and Technology Progress Award.  the technology solutions of “replacing oil with electricity” set up the demonstration project of low-price sliding contact lines, and was well recognized by the governments at all levels. RTG “replacing oil with electricity” project of Shekou Container Terminal was granted the title of Transformation Demonstration Project of Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction by Ministry of Transport. Shekou port became the first Chinese port that was rated as National High-tech Enterprise by Ministry of Science and Technology in 2013. It is currently the first national high-tech enterprise to obtain the certificate in domestic industry. In addition, Shenzhen western port of China Merchants International is listed as the first batch of national green and low-carbon demonstration port by Chinese Ministry of Transport, drawing wide interest of international industry.
 
Prospect
 
In the future, China Merchants International will continue to increase investment in science and technology innovation, strengthen the green and low-carbon technology R&D and application and transformation of scientific and technological innovation. The company is committed to building a green and low carbon port and intelligent modern port. It will also share its experience on green and low-carbon port construction in western Shenzhen port, promote the green shipping concept and promote social sustainable development.