San Francisco-based BSR, which has been promoting sustainable transport for the past 20 years, has made another significant contribution to our working waterfront.
By Patrick Burnson
Published: September, 2012
San Francisco-based BSR, which has been promoting sustainable transport for the past 20 years, has made another significant contribution to our working waterfront. Last month, its Clean Cargo Working Group released its latest paper revealing average carbon emissions by trade lane for the ocean shipping industry.
The release of the emissions data—reported by 13 of the world’s leading ocean container carriers, which represent more than 2,000 individual ships or more than 60 percent of ocean container capacity worldwide—provides the shipping industry with high-quality data for use in carbon footprint calculations.
The paper—Clean Cargo’s third annual release—indicates that average carbon-dioxide emissions for global ocean transportation routes declined by nearly 6 percent from 2010 to 2011. While partly driven by changes in carrier representation or global trade conditions, this decline is also likely due to improvements in carrier fleet efficiency and data quality, both having direct benefits for shipping customers.
"Clean Cargo created the industry standard for calculating ocean container carbon-dioxide emissions, and we continuously work to improve the methodology," said Angie Farrag, Clean Cargo Project Manager for BSR’s Transport & Logistics Practice. "The priority now is to scale up shipper use of this data and support efforts to standardize emissions calculations across the entire logistics supply chain. This is critical in moving from measurement and reporting to real performance improvement over time."
For nearly a decade, Clean Cargo—the industry’s largest collaborative effort to measure and report on environmental impact—has worked with ocean carriers, cargo owners ("shippers"), third-party logistics companies and other stakeholders to create credible methodologies and tools to gather vessel-by-vessel carrier environmental performance data and, in particular, carbon footprint data.
"Clean Cargo provides us with actual carbon-dioxide emissions from our carriers," said Gorm Kjaerboll, Ocean Operations Manager at Electrolux and a Clean Cargo steering committee member. "As a shipper, we need good quality data to set and deliver on our own carbon footprint targets. We value our carriers’ efforts and welcome other shippers to join the dialogue and continue improvement of standards and performance."
Clean Cargo’s annual trade-lane emissions factors can be found at www.bsr.org. More information on Clean Cargo’s work will be available in two upcoming reports describing the group’s data methodology and shipper use of its data and tools.
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Dale Becomes New Director of USF Center for the Pacific Rim
In other trade news, we have learned that the University of San Francisco’s "Center for the Pacific Rim" has a new executive director—Melissa S. Dale.
Prior to joining the faculty and staff at USF, she served as Associate Director of International Relations at Berkeley, where she worked in the areas of international relations and development for the entire campus with a particular focus on prospect development and stewardship for leadership and major gifts from the Asia-Pacific region. From 2008 to 2011, she was Assistant Director for Strategic Planning at the Institute of East Asian Studies at Berkeley, where her responsibilities included strategic planning, project management, global communications, development and event management. She previously worked at USF as the Associate Director of Research at the Center’s Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History.
Dr. Dale is also Assistant Professor at the Center for the Pacific Rim. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian History (China) from Georgetown University in 2000, an M.A. in Asian Languages (Chinese) from Stanford in 1991 and a B.A. in Oriental Languages (Chinese) in 1989 from UC Berkeley. Her research interests focus on the social history of late imperial China including Qing dynasty court life, eunuchs, Chinese-Western medical exchange, and gender studies. Her most recent publication is "Understanding Emasculation: Western Medical Perspectives on Chinese Eunuchs," which appeared in Social History of Medicine. She has taught courses at Georgetown University, Santa Clara University, and UC Santa Cruz, guest lectured at Berkeley, and led the Cal Alumni tour to China.
The Center for the Pacific Rim is a valuable business resource for Bay Area shippers and others interested in business opportunities in Asia. Most recently, the Center staged "China’s Car Culture," an interview and book signing with Greg Anderson, Ph.D., author of Designated Drivers: How China Plans to Dominate the Global Auto Industry.
www.usfca.edu/pacificrim/overview/
