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 CO₂ 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 CO₂ 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.

This research focusses on assessing the environmental performance of European Ports based on a wide representation of EcoPorts members. The data is extracted from the Self-Diagnosis Method (SDM), a concise checklist against which port managers can self-assess the environmental management of their port in relation to the performance of the EcoPorts membership. A total number of 97 ports from 18 different European Maritime States contributed to this evaluation. They have answered questions related to the main components of internationally recognized Environmental Management System (EMS) standards. Similar periodic assessments have been carried out since 2013, allowing for the identification of benchmark performance. The geographical representation and characteristics of the participating ports are given along with the perceived ranking of priority environmental issues based on regular reviews. Air quality has been the top environmental priority for many years, followed by climate change, which has risen rapidly to the second position. Most of the ports have an environmental policy in place (96%) and a compilation of an inventory of significant environmental aspects (92%). Transparency is also very important to ports, with 91% of ports communicating their environmental policy to stakeholders, and 86% of ports making it publicly available on their website. Around 80% of ports have set up an environmental monitoring program, with port waste being the most monitored issue. With regard to services to shipping, more than half of the responding ports are offering on shore power supply (OPS), and one third of them have made LNG bunkering available. In parallel, an increasing number of ports compared with previous exercises (57%) provide differentiated dues for ships that go beyond regulatory standards, with air emissions, waste and climate change being the main target of these discounts. In general, trends over the years have shown a clear improvement of the environmental port performance.

Climate change is an established and growing priority environmental issue. This paper investigates the importance of climate change in ports through a research-based survey on data collected from participants at the Greenport Congress in Valencia in 2018. The data for this paper were obtained from the responses of 55 port professionals and environmental specialists that replied to a questionnaire survey during the Congress. Questionnaires were analyzed to identify the opinions and experience of delegates. A collaborative approach involving the free exchange of knowledge and experience between port professionals, industry practitioners and academia is the model most likely to deliver practicable options to the mutual advantage of operators, local communities, regulatory authorities and the environment. Based on the results of this survey, Climate Change occupies the 6th position among top 10 environmental port priorities and Carbon Footprint the 8th position. This reflects the importance of these two issues in the whole set of environmental priorities. Data collection has been identified as the main challenge ports encounter to implement a carbon management program. The need for a common port-sector Carbon Footprint scheme, which would benefit individual port authorities and the port-sector as a whole, was highlighted by the participants.