Review of Initiatives and Methodologies to Reduce CO 2 Emissions and Climate Change Effects in Ports

Sahar Azarkamand, Chris Wooldridge and R. M. Darbra
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Sahar Azarkamand: Resource Recovery and Environmental Management (R2EM), Department of Chemical Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, BarcelonaTech, Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Chris Wooldridge: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Main Building, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
R. M. Darbra: Resource Recovery and Environmental Management (R2EM), Department of Chemical Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, BarcelonaTech, Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 11, 1-17

Abstract: Ports are important infrastructures for economic growth and development. Among the most significant environmental aspects of ports that contribute to the issue of climate change are those due to carbon dioxide emissions generated by port activities. Given the importance of this topic, this paper gathers initiatives and methodologies that have been undertaken to calculate and reduce CO 2 emissions and climate change effects in ports. After studying these methodologies, their strengths and opportunities for further enhancement have been analyzed. The results show that, in recent years, several ports have started to calculate their carbon footprint and report it. However, in some of the cases, not all the sources of GHG gases that are occurring actually in ports are taken into account, such as emissions from waste treatment operations and employees’ commuting. On other occasions, scopes are not defined following standard guidelines. Furthermore, each authority or operator uses its own method to calculate CO 2 emissions, which makes the comparison of results difficult. For these reasons, this paper suggests the need for creating a standardized tool to calculate carbon footprint in ports, which will make it possible to establish a benchmark and a potential comparison of results among ports.

Keywords: CO 2; climate change; carbon footprint; greenhouse gases; ports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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