Author(s)

ANASTASIA CHRISTODOULOU

Abstract

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.

Keywords

carbon footprint, supply chain, sustainable procurement, environmental performance, environmental performance indices, air pollution, maritime transport, shipping, emissions