Good practice:

PORT CARBON FOOTPRINT ASSESSMENT AND METHODOLOGY

The Carbon footprint assessment follows national and international Guidelines for determining the environmental impact of the seaports, especially in relation to NOx, SOx, CO2, CO, N2O, CH4, PM10 e PM2.5.
This methodology, which combines data from the Port monitoring platform, already operational, called MONICA (Monitoring and Control Architecture), with information from vessels and factories emissions. In this respect, the methodology ensures that both maritime as well as land operation are thoroughly assessed.
Databases such as HIS Markit and the IMO ships emissions toolkit are used for retrieving information related to ships calling the seaports. Data for terminals and plants settled in the ports are calculated from operators’ data.Knowing how much trucks and road traffic in general contribute to CO2 emissions is a power policy tool to better steer decision making towards a more sustainable approach.
Beneficiaries and users of this practice are public authorities, such as the Regional and City Government, environmental Agencies and the local communities in general. The information provided can help in better drafting port policies and planning.

An FTE for at least on year is needed for develop-ng this methodology and calculation. Of course, the Port Monitoring System implies additional costs as well. The basic (core) components of MONICA platform costed up to 100,000 euros in the early implementation stages.

The Carbon footprint analysis has been the first CO2 and other harmful gases calculation, that has globally determined the environmental impact of the Port System based on actual data. This practice has been already successfully shared with local stakeholder in September 2019.

Even if guidelines and international benchmarks were already available, the setting up of this methodology at local level was quite challenging in collecting all data and calculating in particular land based emissions. Cooperation from private operators has been not always an easy task.

This methodology can be used also in other ports or port systems. Formulas, as well as the deployment of the Port Monitoring System follow international benchmarks that are built up on standard practices, that led to measurable results. In this sense, the transfer of both the methodology as well as the conditions conducive to the CO2 calculations are needed, first of all the availability of a Port Monitoring System, that releases reliable data on maritime and land operations.
The combination of ICT tools and direct observations for determining environmental data represents a good compromise for launching such an analysis in ports, that have never investigated before the environmental impact of operations.
For developing this good practices, an essential preliminary step is the setting up of a Port Monitoring platform, that delivers data on maritime and port operation real time.