MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Internet database to help reduce shipping emissions rating ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’ vessels

Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson created Shippingefficiency.org

A free Internet database that lists the energy efficiency of almost every ocean-going vessel, in a scheme designed to reduce shipping emissions by nearly 25%, was set up on Sunday by Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson, reports London’s The Guardian.

Using publicly-available data on the engine size and carbon dioxide emissions of nearly 60,000 ships, exporters and importers, as well as holidaymakers on cruises, will be able to choose between clean and dirty ships.

The initiative, called Shippingefficiency.org, rates ships from A to G in a similar fashion to ratings given to refrigerators or washing machines. It will allow supermarkets, oil and mining companies, food importers, retailers and manufacturers to specify that their goods are sent from places like China or Australia only by the least-polluting ships.

Britain, which imports most of its food and manufactured goods by sea, is expected to be one of the heaviest users of the database.

“By eco-labelling clean and dirty ships, we hope to change the mindset in shipping and begin making gigaton-scale reductions in emissions,” said Mr Peter Boyd, director of Carbon War Room, a business NGO co-founded by Mr Branson with the aim of saving millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the industry.

“We hope this will act as a catalyst for the industry to become not only sustainable but also more profitable,” said Mr Branson, who is in Cancun for the climate talks.

Shipping and aviation are not obliged by international law to reduce their emissions as countries are. This is expected to change but depends on the climate talks.

Under the new ratings, the lowest score, G, went to the mighty Aegean, a giant crude oil tanker built nearly 40 years ago.

Top marks went to the Berge Stahl, a bulk carrier which is so big it can only dock in two ports in the world - Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Ponta da Madeira in Brazil.