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NS. PETERSBURG, Russia – A Russian startup seeking to capitalize on climate change in the Far North gained significant commercial backing when Dubai-based giant logistics and port company DP World signed an agreement Friday to help manage operations along sea lanes. the thawed Arctic Ocean.

While climate change brings disaster The Russia project envisions a sort of silver lining in the reduction of both profits and additional emissions from thawing the Arctic ice, as floods, fires and heatwaves across much of the world this summer have shortened shipping distances between Asia and Europe. .

Sea routes called the Northern Sea Route are already in use. Russia began navigating the waters in the 1930s. But most goods are only transported to export markets between Russian ports or in the case of oil and gas from Siberian fields.

What’s new is the emphasis on shipping along the route between Asia and Europe, with DP World agreeing to collaborate on the development on Friday.

Company executives at St. The agreement, which he theatrically signed on the deck of a boat sailing the St. Petersburg canals, gives the Russian project the stamp of commercial approval by one of the world’s largest logistics companies. Climate change is at the heart of the business.

“The melting of the ice is what drives us,” said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Chairman and CEO of DP World, about his decision to invest in the Russian sea route.

Although ice still blocks the Northern Sea Route for much of the year, it is now rare enough in the summer that so-called ice-class ships with reinforced hulls that allow them to navigate sea ice can sail most of the distance with nothing. icebreaker escort.

Under the agreement, the Russian company Rosatom, which manages DP World and the Northern Sea Route, will design a fleet of ice-class container ships.

The companies will also work on the development of Russian ports at both ends of the sea route – in Murmansk and Vladivostok – to carry out the transfer of containers from ice class ships to ordinary ships. This is necessary so that more expensive ice class ships sail only in the Far North, and not the entire distance to the destination of the containers.

“As a company involved in logistics and port operations worldwide, this is a unique place where we can offer our expertise,” said Sulayem. “We decided to really succeed.” DP World did not disclose how much it plans to invest.

Climate change was particularly pronounced in the polar regions of the world. For example, forest fires broke out in the tundra in the Far North of Russia this summer.

Warming has led to drastic reductions in sea ice. While the meltdown exposes Russia to new security threats along its northern border, it also creates commercial opportunities, most notably the opening of new sea routes.

In recent years, the minimum summer ice mass in the ocean is about one-third less than the average in the 1980s, when monitoring began, Colorado-based researchers said. National Snow and Ice Data Center said last year. NS the ocean lost It is expected to be mostly ice-free during the summer months, including about one million square miles of ice and the Arctic by the middle of the century.

Executives of both companies stressed that the shorter route has the potential to reduce emissions from ships.

For example, the shipping time from Busan to Amsterdam in South Korea is 13 days shorter on the Northern Sea Route compared to the Suez Canal. However, the expanding calendar for shipping facilitates the extraction of oil, natural gas and coal, all fuels that cause warming in Russia’s Arctic.

Russian state nuclear company Rosatom, the legally designated infrastructure operator along the route, is investing in the opening of the Arctic Ocean as an alternative to the Suez Canal.

Prior to the signing, Rosatom met with DP World executives, foreign ambassadors and correspondents in St. Petersburg on a boat tour passing the Baltic Shipyard, where four new nuclear icebreakers are under construction. Each cost about $800 million, according to Rosatom.

In the north, the company is also dredging ports on Russia’s north coast to accommodate larger vessels.

He placed a floating nuclear power plant in Pevek, a port, to supply electricity to coastal facilities.

And it’s coordinating investments in navigation aids, search and rescue capabilities, and better ice mapping, according to presentations by company executives and Russian government officials.

Aleksei Likhachev, director of Rosatom, said shipping in the thawing Arctic Ocean is “a new business on a global scale”.

In Russia, too, we are suffering from climate change, forest fires that have never happened before, tornadoes and rains falling in unexpected places,” he said. But that doesn’t mean the country shouldn’t use shipping routes that open longer throughout the year due to ice retreat, he said.

He said the goal of container shipping in the Arctic Ocean is to “get to business as usual”.