The Green Award Foundation, an incentive provider to the Environmental Ship Index (ESI), has become the first organisation to carry out onboard verification checks on behalf of the ESI.
The cooperation between the Green Award and the ESI means the two will be working even more closely together to streamline the scoring process and better incentivise green ships. At present globally 30 ports recognise the Green Award certificate.
The ESI verification checks will be carried out at random during the regular Green Award audit - carried out on a global scale by award-employed auditors - and will mean that Green Award certified ships will only be subject to one annual inspection.
Rotterdam-based Jan Fransen, managing director of the Green Award Foundation, told GreenPort: “It is better to incorporate both together, it’s a win-win situation for both parties and for Green Award certificate holders. Streamlining the approach saves both time and money and reduces the inspection burden for the ship’s crew. We’ll be looking at more collaboration in the future.”
Mr Fransen adds that the programme currently has a “significant number” of LNG tankers going through its certification process and results should be announced before Christmas. Further, next year the Green Award certification is expected to become available for containerships.
It’s also focusing on inland barging in Europe. In the last year over 350 barges have been certified (the majority in The Netherlands). Eight Dutch ports and six banks provide incentives for the group and 2013 will see more ports following this lead.
