2012.TEL.7737 5
Summary
Sustainability is a rapidly growing topic and impacting many industries nowadays. This also includes the port sector. Which is faced, in contrast to other sectors, with environmental issues for air, soil and water. Sustainability in the port area means that every effort has to be taken to eliminate the use of non-renewable natural resources and for protection of the environment, both direct and indirect. But sustainability means more than reducing emissions alone.
This report aims to provide insight in what sustainability exactly means for the port sector, what measures have been taken by ports around the world to lower their environmental impact, how ports have achieved a certain level of sustainability and how this is presented to (local) stakeholders as the local community. The report contains a ‘Proposed Assessment Method’ that is based on the state-of-the-art ‘best practices’ on sustainability taken by ports around the world. An extensive list of these items has been included in the Appendix (Appendix 6). The first chapter gives a description of ‘sustainability in the port sector’, the assignment and base of this research.
The second chapter discusses the environmental organizations that are related to the port sector. The work of the European Sea Ports Organization (ESPO) has been studied. They have provided two important ‘environmental review programs’. The ‘Self Diagnosis Method’ (SDM) is a first basis of ports to check their environmental risks and helps to establish port-specific environmental priorities. The Port Environmental Review System’ (PERS) is a more comprehensive tool that is designed to help implementing environmental measures as proposed by ESPO. The most complete environmental management tools for the ports are the ‘Eco-Management and Audit Scheme’ (EMAS) and ISO 14001. Both tools are internationally recognized and a port can apply for an independent certification. A noteworthy project is PPRISM (Port Performance Indicators: Selection and Measurement’). This project was intended to measure the environmental performance of ports with some key indicators. During the project 125 indicators were proposed of which merely 7 were considered as ‘relevant and feasible’. The outcome of this project indicates that measuring ‘environmental performance’ between ports has many implications and direct comparison on a ‘degree of sustainability’ is difficult, and can only be done on a generic (basic) and limited scale.
For this project the top environmental priorities of ports have been studied. It turns out that they have continuously changed during the last 15 years, and likely will change in the future. Priorities as ‘noise’ and ‘air quality’ have become top priority items that were of less importance years ago. It stresses that a state-of-the-art definition of sustainability today is likely to be outdated in the future. For that reason it is important to continuously check what issues have importance. As well noteworthy is the item ‘garbage and waste’, which is a concern for smaller and larger ports. Small ports are faced with smaller quantities and might have problems with a proper treatment, while larger ports are faced with regulatory problems due to the large amounts of waste they generate. They have to take extensive measures for proper collection and treatment. The key priorities as emissions (to air, water, soil, noise and light), energy-, fuel- and heat demand, material and waste, land use and local environment are discussed in Chapter 3.
The ‘best practices’ of ports around the world have been combined into an ‘inventory list’ of possible measures to achieve a lower impact on the environment. A categorization of this list, which is also used as framework for the ‘Proposed Assessment Method’ is presented in Chapter 4. This chapter also briefly denotes some items that require additional explanation and presents some results from measures that have been taken.
Because ports are faced with many environmental issues, they are also faced with a large amount of regulations that are set to lower the impact of operations. The fifth chapter discusses the regulations that are related to air emissions, water-, noise and light pollution. The air emission regulations can be divided in ‘National Emission Ceilings’ that set a maximum to certain pollutants in kilotons per year, and ‘air quality standards’ that set requirements on the maximum concentrations of certain pollutants in the air in micrograms per cubic meter. Engines in on-road and non-road applications are restricted
2012.TEL.7737 6 to regulations as well. These are also presented. The EURO V and TIER III standard are currently into force (2012). In the forthcoming years the tighter EURO VI and TIER IV standards will be gradually put into force. These standards oblige lower emissions per kWh. The Chapter is concluded with information on carbon dioxide regulations, which is, for the transportation sector, very scattered. For shipping, for example, there is no global approach in regulating carbon dioxide emissions up to today. This in contrast with sulphur content in marine fuels, which have to be decreased from 1,5% to 0,5% as of 2020.
The ‘Proposed Assessment Method’ is presented in Chapter 6. This chapter includes some limitations of measuring in general and provides some examples of calculating emissions and fuel consumption. The assessment itself contains 14 sections, majorly based on ‘polluting sources’, which can be assessed on sustainability. The categorization of these 14 sections is explained and illustrated in Chapter 3. The idea of the ‘Proposed Assessment Method’ is that a port can check whether they have done sufficient effort on sustainability. The assessment shows what measures still could be taken to lower the environmental impact. Just as with the ‘Self Diagnosis Method’ (SDM) and ‘Port Environmental Review System’ (PERS) by ESPO it provides direct insight how good current practice is. The assessment reflects that the best way to achieve sustainability is by lowering the environmental impact of ‘pollutant sources’. This is a contrast of the ‘conventional’ approach of taking all kinds of ‘preventive measures’ to lower the environmental issues that are caused by these ‘pollutant sources’. A ‘Quick Scan’ (shortened) Assessment Method is provided at the end of Chapter 6, it uses 22 items from the general ‘Proposed Assessment Method’, and describes port sustainability in a large degree. It is based on the ‘Pareto Principle’, which means that 20% of the items in the general ‘Proposed Assessment Method’ describe 80% of the sustainability in a port. The shortened ‘Proposed Assessment Method’ can be used as first basis to check port sustainability, before ‘diving into details’ of the general version.
The report is concluded with a brief view on the research results, developments and opportunities of sustainability in the port sector. Some recommendations for further research are proposed.
