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Review
. 2020 May 29;17(11):3858.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph17113858.

Review of Initiatives and Methodologies to Reduce CO2 Emissions and Climate Change Effects in Ports

Sahar Azarkamand  1 , Chris Wooldridge  2 , R M Darbra  1
Affiliations
Review

Review of Initiatives and Methodologies to Reduce CO2 Emissions and Climate Change Effects in Ports

Sahar Azarkamand et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: CO2; carbon footprint; climate change; greenhouse gases; ports.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Percentage of the strengths and opportunities for further enhancement of the existing methodologies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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