Climate Change and Short Sea Shipping

    Climate Change is now at the forefront of our national and worldwide dialogue. Personally, I became interested in the subject of climate change more than two decades ago with the introduction of the EU Marco Polo programs that offered financial incentives to companies that made a transportation modal shift from road to either rail or water transits for their cargo. Twenty-six EU nations underwrote the more than €500 million that was distributed to companies that embraced Marco Polo.

    To earn the incentives, companies had to quantify the reduced emissions of CO2, NOx, SOx, and other noxious chemicals into the atmosphere. The scorekeeper was the Marco Polo calculator that compared the emissions attributes between a cargo’s journey on the road versus using a rail and or river/water transit for the same cargo. The advent of the Marco Polo programs coincided with the burgeoning “container revolution” that began in earnest at the turn of the century.

    We at Green Shipping Line converted the EU Marco Polo calculator from EU metrics to American metrics. Others have begun to create their own emissions measurement tools, but it is worth mentioning that the original emissions calculator was created by our own U.S. Department of Transportation. To my knowledge, the first climate legislation on emissions was the American Air Pollution Act of 1955! We were way ahead of the game until we weren’t.

    What does all this have to do with short-sea shipping? Short sea ships move cargoes between our domestic ports on our navigable waterways instead of by trucks on our highways. As water transits are up to seven (7) times greener (fewer emissions) than road transits, climate change can be significantly positively impacted by short sea shipping.

    Ship goods domestically by water = lower emissions.

    That is why we at Green Shipping Line believe that the best emission is the one that is never emitted.


Written by Percy R. Pyne

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