Analysis | A 'Made in Germany' Solution to a Climate-Crisis Problem - The Washington Post

A ‘Made in Germany’ Solution to a Climate-Crisis Problem - The Washington Post

It reads like a script for an ad promoting German engineering prowess: an intractable problem, billions of dollars at risk, old-fashioned industrial design and, voila, a solution.

Over the last decade, repeated summer droughts plus lower winter snowfalls in the Alps have imperiled navigation, disrupting supply chains so much that factories had to slow production — and even close. During the historic 2018 drought, when barges couldn’t traverse the river’s shallows, the economic impact was so large that it shaved several decimal points from Germany’s gross domestic product. It happened again last summer; and this year is even worse, as water levels in the middle course of the Rhine plunge to levels unseen so early in the summer.

This time, however, German industry has the beginnings of a solution. After the 2018 crisis, companies including chemical behemoth BASF SE, which relies heavily on the Rhine, put engineers and naval architects at work to find an answer. Discretely, Berlin supported the effort with public money. Five years later, the fix is the Stolt Ludwigshafen — a new kind of Rhine barge with a shallower draft designed for the climate-change era. The famous Hergestellt in Deutschland (Made in Germany) slogan comes to mind, even if the craft was actually built in a Chinese shipyard.

To the untrained eye, the Stolt Ludwigshafen, which was only christened a couple of months ago and is named after the German city that’s home to the world’s largest chemical plant on the shores of the Rhine, doesn’t look that remarkable. But compared with the typical Rhine barge, the differences are notable. At 135 meters (443 feet) long and 17.5 meters wide, it’s considerably wider than peers, which typically measure 110 meters by 11.5 meters. Its yellow-and-black hull has a new design, made of lightweight materials. Hidden from view is a new propulsion system, too. All combined, she can sail the Rhine shallows with a decent cargo onboard even when the water level is so low that others would risk grounding on the riverbed.

The Rhine has perennially suffered from low water. The key water level dropped to 64 centimeters in 1991, 68 centimeters in 1997 and 35 centimeters in 2003. But the industry made the situation worse over the last couple of decades by relying on long, narrow barges that delivered economies of scale, but struggled with low water levels.

According to the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine, the river is one of the world’s most frequented waterways. On any given day, about 6,900 vessels transport cargo up and down its nearly 800-mile-long course. So a handful of new barges — they cost around €10 million ($11 million) apiece — won’t solve the problem, but they at least show show there’s a potential solution, particularly for shipping the most critical goods — and shipyards are starting to ramp up production.

The most important chokepoint is Kaub, a picturesque town south of Cologne, where the Rhine is flanked by medieval castles. On Wednesday, the water there dropped to 97 centimeters — alarming because the one-meter level hadn’t been breached so early during the summer period in at least three decades of detailed data. Even during the 2018 drought, that depth wasn’t breached until July 21.

When the water gauge drops to such low levels, conventional barges can only cross the river at Kaub if they sail with a fraction of their typical cargo. The Stolt Ludwigshafen, however, can navigate the chokepoint with about 2,300 tonnes at 100 centimeters, about twice what a conventional barge can do, according to BASF. Perhaps even more important, it can still sail at just 30 centimeters, a level impassable to almost everyone else. In 2018, the Kaub gauge registered an all-time low of 25 centimeters in October.(1)

The new barge is an example of climate-change adaptation. Rather than fight the causes of global warming, companies are trying to find workarounds. For green activists, that’s the wrong response. But for executives, at least it keeps their factories humming.

German officials reckon that historic Rhine droughts like the one experienced in 2018 are becoming the norm. Rather than every 60 years, they could suffer one every 10 or 20 years. Industries that rely on navigating the waterway will need more of the new shallow-draft barges to keep their business afloat as snowfall recedes and summer get even hotter.

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(1) In the Rhine, the water gauge level isn’t the actual depth of the river, but rather reflects a measure that takes into account the ideal water level for navigation inside the river’s channel. For Kaub, the actual river depth when the gauge drops to 30 centimeters is about 140 centimeters.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Javier Blas is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. A former reporter for Bloomberg News and commodities editor at the Financial Times, he is coauthor of “The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources.”

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