Pacific Basin rolls out carbon-neutral voyage program

Hong Kong-based dry bulk shipping company Pacific Basin has launched its PB Carbon Neutral Voyage Programme as part of its broader decarbonization strategy.

As informed, for Pacific Basin customers that want carbon neutral shipping, the company offers the option of voluntarily offsetting voyage emissions from the transportation of their cargoes on Pacific Basin ships.

“Major commodity producers, traders and end users – including some of our customers – have expressed increasing interest in mitigating their environmental footprint, including by beginning to offset some of their currently unavoidable direct and indirect emissions,” Martin Fruergaard, CEO of Pacific Basin, commented.

“With such environmentally-inclined cargo interests in mind, we look forward to partnering with our customers on carbon neutral voyages and multi-voyage ‘green COAs’ on offer through our PB Carbon Neutral Voyage Programme.”

“While we invest in reducing our actual carbon emissions, inviting our customers to pay for offsets redirects capital into renewable energy projects which, in addition to balancing out one’s own carbon footprints, supports the underlying renewable asset and local community, and also incentivises the development of more renewable energy projects,” he added.

“At Pacific Basin, we take the firm view that carbon offsetting is no substitute for tangible efforts to reduce and eventually eliminate our actual emissions. We are pursuing a comprehensive programme of initiatives that continue to gradually reduce our owned fleet’s carbon intensity, but our company and industry still have a long journey ahead to full decarbonisation which we target to achieve in our Pacific Basin fleet by 2050,” Fruergaard explained.

“Carbon offsetting is at least something we can do today and, as long as we still generate unavoidable emissions, we believe that neutralising emissions through offsetting is an extra step worth taking.”

In December last year, the shipping company pledged to offset all carbon emissions from its global shore-side operations starting in 2020, including all office activities, commuting and business and crew travel.

To facilitate carbon offsets for both its PB Carbon Neutral Voyage Programme and its global shore-side operations, Pacific Basin has partnered with CLP Innovation Enterprises Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-headquartered power company CLP Holdings Limited (CLP), which is supplying Pacific Basin’s carbon emissions offset programme with independently verified carbon credits derived from CLP’s wind and solar farms in Asia.

Pacific Basin currently operates around 250 dry bulk ships of which 120 are owned and the rest chartered.

In September 2021, the company signed the Call to Action for Shipping Decarbonisation, a joint industry initiative that urges world leaders to align shipping with the Paris Agreement temperature goal and calls for decisive government action to enable full decarbonisation of international shipping by 2050.