Dr Tristan Smith is a lecturer in Energy and Transport at the UCL Energy Institute, where he leads a shipping modelling and analysis research group. Tristan has degrees in Engineering and Naval Architecture and he has been the coordinator of the project Low Carbon Shipping – A Systems Approach, leading two of the six work packages on ‘modelling the global shipping system’ and ‘regulation policy and incentives for low carbon shipping’.

Tristan's research interests cover all aspects of shipping economics, logistics and operation and he has been leading a consortium of ten organisations to produce the Third IMO Greenhouse Gas Study 2014: a major publication for the industry, which is used as a reference for CO2 emission regulatory discussions for the future.

It's interesting to hear Tristan explain the challenges the researchers meet when trying to explain the shipping industry and it mechanisms to the policy makers and what difficulties there is for the same researchers to reach the industry and convince them to let go of the mind-set of "what can we get away with".

Hear how Tristan examines the often used arguments for why shipping should benefit from not making any changes to the current state of the business; Shipping is the greenest form of transport, Shipping is too important to the global economy, Shipping is intractable for developing countries & that the current technology is the only solution.

It's a bright future with no shortage of stimulating employment opportunities that Tristan describes for the #shipping industry.

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Any comment you may have on the content of this episode is welcome, use @ShippingPodcast for twitter or go to the website www.shippingpodcast.com don't forget to include @tristanps ;)

Let's get the debate going!