Interview with Giulia Sforzi: Expanding practices
Photo Credit: Giulia Sforzi
A principal engineer in the ships and dredging group at HR Wallingford, Giulia Sforzi is currently focused on implementing decarbonisation strategies into her projects. With over 12 years of experience working on marine surveying, modelling and construction projects, she recognises the significant advantages and challenges that lie ahead.
“The transition to carbon neutrality is probably the largest issue that is on my and the dredging industry’s radar for the next decade,” she tells CEDA Industry News. “I’ve been asking myself how I can best help the industry as an individual and as a stakeholder. Conducting environmental modelling and research, watching documentaries and being mindful that my projects are as sustainable as possible didn’t feel like enough. So as soon as the opportunity arose to volunteer as a member of the CEDA Commission on Decarbonisation, I signed up right away.”
Dredgingadvancements
Over the last decade, Sforzi has witnessed a number of changes in the sector, suggesting an evolution to lower emissions is already well underway. “There has been a technological shift where the industry now builds larger, more powerful and efficient dredgers that will take new fuels. We already have LNG dredgers and, in the not-too-distant future, dredgers that will run on methanol, hydrogen and other forms of fuel. There has also been a shift in the approach contractors take toward projects. Now there is a greater focus on the environment and making sure projects can deliver higher levels of sustainability,” she remarks.
But the road to Net Zero requires more than machinery. “There’s also an entire other aspect to the industry seeing rapid advancement, such as how you model and monitor a project. We can’t just advance technology in terms of machinery, we also need to foster the advancement of regulations and our technological thought process to continue improving dredging’s environmental practice.”
Sforzi foregrounds the value of viewing dredging projects from multiple perspectives, proactively considering regulatory, environmental and contractual points of view in a project’s initial stages. Thinking in this way has helped her understand the different phases and roles within a project, offering the additional benefit of allowing her to better represent clients. “When we speak about technological advances we may be thinking of a tool or some form of physical object, but the synergy between a project’s various roles can be just as important in providing optimisations and reducing the carbon footprint” she points out.
Environmental Practices
Utilising existing data from past research, modelling and environmental impact assessments is one way the industry can share knowledge to inform environmental parameters for a project. However, Sforzi tells CEDA Industry News several times she and her team had to conduct their own extensive research and preliminary modelling before the construction of large pieces of infrastructure could begin.
“A fish can’t tell you the concentration at which dissolved oxygen is too low,” she says, adding that “nature doesn't think in technical terms, precise measurements, or as a cost-benefit analysis. Natural behaviour is adaptive to environmental conditions. This is why it is essential that we understand how the local ecology works, what the likely resulting reactions may be and we take these into consideration while designing a project. For this reason, studying and modelling alternative scenarios and their impact on the environment is such a crucial preliminary step to ensure that operations are carried out in the most sustainable manner. But sustainable practices don’t end at the designing phase, it’s paramount that monitoring is undertaken during a project’s construction phase implementing an adaptive management approach”
Keeping sustainability and environmental impact at the forefront of modelling project scenarios may change planned outcomes, but allows for new and innovative solutions to be considered as well. The dredging sector has existing examples of this process to draw on, such as the beneficial reuse of dredged sediments which has created win-win solutions.
Sforzi makes clear the benefits this can offer the industry: “We have a duty of care as part of our role that involves providing alternatives for the use of sediment. And while it may not always be possible for various reasons, I prioritise thinking about the soil as a resource and not simply as waste. To be honest, it is quite often actually cheaper to find a use for it rather than disposing of it, because offshore placement sites tend to be far away from the project location and this adds significantly to the overall time and cost involved. So reusing sediment can be a win-win,” she says.
Decarbonisation Commission
As a member of the CEDA Commission on Decarbonisation (CCD), Sforzi represents the interests of CEDA members by collecting, structuring and communicating information on developments regarding the decarbonisation of dredging equipment & projects, and the potential impact on the future of the dredging industry.
As for the industry's decarbonisation strategy, she highlights that “there will be investments in new forms of fuels. However, I don’t believe there is going to be a one-size-fits-all solution. I think certain dredgers will be able to switch to some fuels and others won’t because of the type of work that needs to be performed. We also need to think about where a dredger may be operating as the location of an operation will determine what fuel is available. As a result, fuel-flexible vessels will offer companies conducting global operations an important advantage that values futureproofing.”
Regulatory changes
As part of her work with the CCD, Sforzi has familiarised herself with the European Union’s fit for 55 decarbonisation package.
The Fit for 55 is the EU legislative proposal to support the 55% reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. The maritime sector, previously excluded, is now touched by five of the proposals, these being:
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Revised EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS)
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Revised Energy Taxation Directive (ETD)
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FuelEU Maritime regulation
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Revision to the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR)
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Revision to the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II)
Giulia informs CEDA industry news that “some of these proposals are still under negotiation and it’s unclear if they will all apply to the dredging world since some of these, EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime for example, are only relevant for vessels beyond 5,000GT for the purpose of transporting cargo or passengers. The Revised Energy Taxation Directive is still under negotiation but since it targets fuels directly it will likely affect the dredging industry too. Regardless that some of these directives may not apply to the dredging industry today, I feel the scene has been set and it will not be long before revisions will be proposed to include wider sectors of the maritime industry in the race to reach Net Zero by 2050.”
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