A voluntary partnership of leading maritime goods movement stakeholders, including the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Shanghai seaports, as well as some of the largest shipping lines in the world have developed a Green Shipping Corridor Implementation Plan Outline to accelerate emissions reductions on one of the world’s busiest container shipping routes.
The plan’s development was supported by C40 Cities, a global network of mayors working to deliver the urgent action needed to confront the climate crisis. C40 is the facilitator of the Green Shipping Corridor, providing support to the cities, ports and their corridor partners by coordinating, convening, facilitating and providing communications support in furtherance of the corridor’s goals.
Carrier partners supporting this plan have set goals to begin deploying reduced or zero lifecycle carbon capable ships on the corridor by 2025.
The creation of the first-ever green shipping corridor across the Pacific is already taking shape. The Green Shipping Corridor Implementation Plan Outline was unveiled Sept. 22, with the stated goal of the plan being to accelerate emissions reductions on the Asia-U.S. West Coast shipping route.
“The plan is an important step toward decarbonizing the global supply chains that power our economies, and transitioning toward zero lifecycle carbon emission ships,” organizers said in a statement. “It will showcase cutting-edge goods movement technologies, decarbonization applications and best management practices to enhance efficiency, and catalyze technological, economic and policy efforts to progressively decarbonize shipping and port-related activities.”
As part of the plan, the carrier partners will begin deploying reduced or zero lifecycle carbon capable ships on the corridor by 2025, and work together to demonstrate by 2030 the feasibility of deploying the world’s first zero lifecycle carbon emission container ship(s).
Carrier partners include CMA CGM, COSCO Shipping Lines Co., Ltd., Maersk, and ONE. Core partners include the Shanghai International Port (Group) Co., Ltd., the China Classification Society, and the Maritime Technology Cooperation Centre of Asia.
Participants of the Green Shipping Corridor Partnership have said that they’ll take steps to reduce carbon emissions and harmful pollutant emissions impacting air quality through such methods as expanding use of shore power and supporting the development of clean marine fueling infrastructure.
Cargo owner partners have set goals to contract with carriers to use zero lifecycle carbon emission shipping services, and in an effort to measure progress toward decarbonization, all partners will develop metrics to track decarbonization progress.
“This trans-Pacific green corridor will be a model for the global cooperation needed to accelerate change throughout the maritime industry,” Port of LA Executive Director Gene Seroka said. “(M)ost of the emissions associated with moving cargo by ship occur in the mid-ocean part of the journey between ports. This corridor will help reduce mid-ocean emissions while continuing the work we have done to cut emissions within our ports.”
The 21-page outline is available for direct download at https://tinyurl.com/t9dmy7u2.
A two-minute video summary of the Green Shipping Corridor plan is available on the Port of Long Beach’s YouTube page: https://tinyurl.com/2s4czdp4.