Global ports collaborate on climate change
Major global ports have confirmed their resolve to combat climate change during the latest meeting of a programme to deliver on key environmental goals.
The CEOs of the 11 ports participating in the World Ports Climate Action Program (WPCAP) held an online global conference on 11 June to discuss a series of WPCAP staff recommendations to make strong advancement in addressing global warming, and deliver on the call for clean air through concerted, cooperative actions.
Substantial headway was booked by the CEOs on proposals of five working groups that spent the last half year developing actions on topics such as efficiency, power-to-ship, sustainable fuels, cargo handling equipment and policy.
The WPCAP CEOs adopted five agreements.
They agreed that WPCAP will seek support from IMO Global Industry Alliance in a fact-based overview of emission reduction options, whilst taking the initiative to form a coalition with IMO for developing a joint roadmap on reducing emissions in the ship-port interface.
The CEOs unanimously decided to develop three coalitions to further power-to-ship advancements involving liquid bulk (tankers), containers and cruise. The working group concerned will come up with concrete proposals in three months and prepares investment plans by early 2021.
They have agreed to facilitate the launch of pilot projects in 2021 on new sustainable low carbon marine fuels in their ports that will directly benefit deep-sea/ocean-going vessels. Lessons learned on the usage of LNG was highlighted as these could be used for the introduction of new low or zero emission fuels as well.
The CEOS decided to intensify working relations with terminal operators in their ports in order to introduce equipment demonstration and build a database for information sharing. There also was a strong plea to increase involvement of terminal operators in WPCAP actions.
They agreed on actions improving the impact of policy instruments that ports may choose to use, supporting both decarbonisation of sea going vessels and cargo handling equipment.
WPCAP was initiated by the Port of Rotterdam Authority and launched in September 2018. Other ports that have joined the action-oriented network are: Long Beach, Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, Vancouver, Antwerp, Barcelona, Gothenburg, Hamburg, HAROPA – port of Le Havre and Yokohama.
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