WSS Suez Canal transit team to cut customer costs, workloads and confusion Wilhelmsen Ships Service (WSS) has established a dedicated local transit team to help its customers negotiate not just the Suez Canal, but also the complex rebate system designed to boost traffic through the recently expanded waterway. The new office, based in Alexandria, is staffed 24/7 by local agents who intimately understand both customer requirements and the workings of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA). The canal expansion opened in August last year, cutting vessel waiting time from
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11 hours to three hours, and potentially doubling the number of daily transits. In an effort to incentivise shippers to choose its route over alternatives, SCA has created a rebate system capable of greatly reducing vessel toll fees - if all application criteria are satisfied. Applications must be received by SCA 48 hours prior to a vessel’s departure from its most recent port of origin before entering the canal, while a range of original documents are required post-transit.
10th World Future Energy Summit demonstrates the business case for sustainability With the cost of solar energy plummeting, the World Future Energy Summit 2017 (WFES) will showcase an unprecedented range of financially profitable clean energy solutions, opening up opportunities for green tech companies as the MENA region moves to achieve ambitious sustainability targets. Figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) show the installed cost of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar generation in the UAE fell around 75 per cent between 2008 – the year of WFES’ first edition – and mid-2014. By June 2016, a Masdar-led consortium won the bidding for phase three of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park with a levelised cost of electricity of just US 2.99 cents per KWh. Part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) from 16 to 19 January and hosted by Masdar, WFES 2017 will bring together ADSW’s theme of ‘Practical Steps Towards a Sustainable Future’, with the WFES goal, ‘Sustaining the Clean Energy Consensus, Empowering New Players’. WFES was created to drive the business of clean energy, offering a marketplace where suppliers of new technology can connect with buyers. Since 2008, the economics of that marketplace have changed dramatically, and WFES 2017 brings together solutions that are not only sustainable, but are increasingly the more cost-effective option. That’s especially true when the WFES drives the business of clean long-term returns required for energy across the new-build infrastructure are Middle East, South factored in. Asia and Africa