Crowley commits to net zero by 2050

US ship owner and operator Crowley has committed to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all scopes by 2050, pursuing a path aligned with the latest climate science to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

To reach this target, Crowley — with its 160-strong vessel fleet — estimates that it will reduce overall emissions by 4.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, or the equivalent of removing more than 900,000 cars from the road every year.

“Crowley is on a mission to become the most sustainable and innovative maritime, logistics company in the Americas,” Tom Crowley, chairman and CEO, pointed out.

“Working together with our customers, suppliers, policymakers and others across our value chain, we can meet the climate crisis head on.”

As it lays the groundwork for a clean energy future, Crowley is creating partnerships across the industry with government and non-governmental organizations to collaboratively achieve decarbonization and climate action. These include the Blue Sky Maritime Coalition, which is focused on the North American maritime value chain, and the World Shipping Council focusing on the global container shipping industry.

“Crowley’s value chain accounts for over 80% of our emissions across the enterprise. Collaboration with customers and partners is key to our mutual success reaching net-zero emissions using science-based standards,” Alisa Praskovich, vice president of sustainability, said.

“By creating mutual accountability, we will spur innovation through the open sharing of ideas.”

Reducing GHG emissions is a mission critical issue to Crowley’s stakeholders, according to a recent materiality assessment and survey. With a net-zero commitment across all three scopes, the company will operationalize its emissions reduction.

“First and foremost, achieving net-zero emissions is the right thing to do for our planet and deeply aligns with Crowley’s purpose. It is our responsibility … to anticipate evolving stakeholder and customer expectations,” Ray Fitzgerald, chief operating officer, explained.

To achieve visibility into its total emissions footprint, Crowley has engaged Salesforce to co-develop a greenhouse gas emissions monitoring and modeling platform that will provide benchmarking, transparency and customized disclosures.

“With Sustainability Cloud, Crowley can now have a 360 view of its carbon footprint, with automated dashboards that provide real-time, actionable insights so they can take meaningful climate action across their supply chain,” according to Ari Alexander, GM of Salesforce Sustainability Cloud.

Other activities to date include introducing an all-electric tugboat and the development of alternative energy vessels and offshore wind services.

The company formed a New Energy division that will provide offshore wind services in the U.S. and is developing a program that will allow customers to select more sustainable fuels.

In the coming months, Crowley anticipates submitting its long-and short-term emission reduction goals to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and is set to release an enterprise-wide sustainability roadmap and complete its inaugural sustainability report in 2022.