Do eco-rating schemes improve the environmental performance of ships?

Poulsen, René Taudal; Hermann, Roberto Rivas; Smink, Carla

doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2017.10.006

Cited by 13 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…That transparency does not lead to sustainability improvements per se has already been confirmed by studies into transparency within the shipping sector. Scott et al (2017), Poulsen et al (2018a) and Van Leeuwen (2019) have emphasized the limitations of multi-stakeholder initiatives that disclose environmental performance data for individual ships, highlighting lack of effectiveness due to limited data validation, lack of ambition and low industry legitimacy. These issues are echoed in research that studies the role of ports, one of the key value chain actors in shipping, in the abatement of air pollutants from ships.…”

Section: The Role Of Gvc Governance In Shaping Transparency As a Teg mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Potential and Limits of Environmental Disclosure Regulation: A Global Value Chain Perspective Applied to Tanker Shipping

Poulsen¹,

Ponte²,

Leeuwen³

et al. 2021

Global Environmental Politics

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Exploring how transnational environmental governance and the operation of global value chains (GVCs) intersect is key in explaining the circumstances under which mandatory disclosure can improve the environmental footprint of business operations. We investigate how the governance dynamics of the tanker shipping value chain (a major emitter of greenhouse gases) limits the effectiveness of the European Union (EU) monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) regulation, which mandates the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions for ships calling at EU ports. Although MRV seeks to help shipowners and ship managers save fuel and reduce emissions, it does not address the complexity of power relations along the tanker shipping value chain and currently cannot disentangle how different actors influence the design, operational, commercial, and ocean/weather factors that together determine fuel consumption. In particular, the EU MRV neglects to reflect on how oil majors exert their power and impose their commercial priorities on other actors, and thus co-determine fuel use levels. We conclude that, in its current form, the EU MRV is unlikely to lead to significant environmental upgrading in tanker shipping. More generally, we argue that regulators seeking to facilitate environmental upgrading need to expand their focus beyond the unwanted behaviors of producers of goods and providers of services to also address the incentive structures and demands placed on them by global buyers.

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Section: The Role Of Gvc Governance In Shaping Transparency As a Teg mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Potential and Limits of Environmental Disclosure Regulation: A Global Value Chain Perspective Applied to Tanker Shipping

Poulsen¹,

Ponte²,

Leeuwen³

et al. 2021

Global Environmental Politics

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“…'Eco-labelling' is a quite popular informative initiative targeting shipping-related air emissions, and this includes various environmental indices that enable the measurement and comparison of the environmental performance of individual vessels. Many ports worldwide provide discounts (known as environmentally differentiated port dues) to 'cleaner' vessels that have a high score by these indices [20], and they could also be useful tools for shippers and freight suppliers in their efforts to include sustainability aspects in their maritime transport decisions [21].…”

Section: Literature On Sustainable Transportation Procurement Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to answer the first research question: whether these environmental performance indices for maritime services are useful for shippers and freight suppliers' decisions, we made an attempt to evaluate these indices on the basis of the existing theoretical framework. The evaluation scheme for the environmental performance indices for shipping developed by Svensson and Andersson [22], in addition to the best practices for eco-labelling, mentioned by Poulsen et al [21], were used as underlying guidelines for the evaluation of the maritime environmental indices. The ESI and CSI were evaluated on the basis of:…”

Section: Good Environmental Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime Environmental Performance Indices: Useful Tools for Evaluating Transport Supplier Environmental Performance?

Christodoulou

2019

WIT Transactions on the Built Environment

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The growing concern of shippers about the carbon footprint of their supply chains led to the development of various environmental indices that enable the measurement of transport supplier's environmental performance. This paper focuses on the environmental performance indices that were developed for the shipping industry that enable the measurement and comparison of environmental performance of individual vessels. Two environmental indices for shipping, the Environmental Ship Index (ESI) and the Clean Shipping Index (CSI), were analyzed for this paper: we highlight their particular features and give some evidence of their practical implementation. The scope of this paper involves investigating the usefulness of these indices for shippers and freight suppliers' decision-making and identifying their effectiveness at improving the environmental performance of shipping services. The environmental differentiated port fees offered by Port Metro Vancouver in Canada and the Port of Gothenburg in Sweden, on the basis of the vessels' ESI and CSI scoring were investigated. The fact that, in both ports, the number of vessels that have an ESI score or a CSI Class is constantly growing, suggests that eco-labelling initiatives and the use of environmental performance indices are becoming more and more popular in the shipping industry. Apart from the shipping companies that might choose a port that rewards 'cleaner' vessels, the shippers themselves may require employed vessels to have such an ecolabel to demonstrate their commitment to sustainable transport. Given the growing concern of shippers about the environmental performance of their supply chains, this paper suggests that these indices are useful tools for the evaluation and measurement of transport supplier environmental performance; they could be used by shippers and freight suppliers for their decision-making about transport mode choices.

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“…Private governance schemes have taken an interest in spreading information on ship's performance in the form of various indices (Poulsen et al 2018;Scott et al 2017), such as the Clean Shipping Index (Wuisan et al 2012). Paint manufacturers like Jotun have contributed to developing an ISO standard 19030 that specify principles for measuring degradation in ship performance due to hull fouling (Søyland and Oftedahl 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While networks, indices, and inventories of measures seem like plausible solutions to a perceived set of mechanisms hindering the adoption of more energy-efficient technologies and practices, little research has yet been carried out that examine how these solutions work in practice. Poulsen et al (2018), for example, point to the need for further longitudinal studies of what effect index schemes actually have on various market segments. Viktorelius and Lundh (2019) showed how an initiative to introduce new technology onboard vessels for monitoring energy use in shipping company in the end depended on local practices onboard.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inter-organizational collaboration for energy efficiency in the maritime sector: the case of a database project

Borg

Knorring

2019

Energy Efficiency

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This article explores the complexities of establishing knowledge-sharing practices between organizations through a case study of the creation of a database for energy efficiency measures relevant to the shipping sector. As researchers and policy-makers tend to point towards knowledge sharing and collaboration as means towards a more energy-efficient society, there is a need to better understand the knowledge sharing practices in such initiatives. The study is based upon extensive fieldwork where the first author was recruited to a collaborative network on energy efficiency in the shipping sector, to aid in the development of the collaboration while carrying out participatory-observational research in an ethnographic tradition. The study highlights the need to maintain realistic expectations for new knowledge-sharing collaborations, and the necessity to allow such arrangements to develop over time.

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Do eco-rating schemes improve the environmental performance of ships?

Cited by 13 publications

References 58 publications

The Potential and Limits of Environmental Disclosure Regulation: A Global Value Chain Perspective Applied to Tanker Shipping

The Potential and Limits of Environmental Disclosure Regulation: A Global Value Chain Perspective Applied to Tanker Shipping

Maritime Environmental Performance Indices: Useful Tools for Evaluating Transport Supplier Environmental Performance?

Inter-organizational collaboration for energy efficiency in the maritime sector: the case of a database project

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