New maritime community to work on reducing GHG emissions from RoRo ships

The Global RoRo Community, which aims to standardize the calculation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) vessels such as car carriers, was established during Smart Freight Week in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The Smart Freight Center (SFC) hosted the official Global RoRo Community kick-off meeting during its annual flagship event, Smart Freight Week. The first meeting was held on April 23, 2024, and attended by ten shipping companies, and classification societies from around the world.

The aim of launching the Global RoRo Community is to establish an ISO 14083/GLEC compliant global standard for scope 3 GHG emissions accounting for deep-sea RoRo shipping, by bringing together stakeholders involved in the transportation of finished vehicles by sea i.e. carriers (shipping lines) and shippers (OEMs).

Japanese shipping major NYK became a member of the Smart Freight Center. The shipowner, together with Wallenius Wilhelmsen, ClassNK, and SFC launched the new community.

Based in Amsterdam, SFC is working to promote global warming countermeasures by visualizing the impact of increased GHG emissions, making proposals for emission reductions, and establishing guidelines for decarbonization in the logistics sector.

The center also aims to reduce GHG emissions from global freight transportation by 1 billion tons by 2030 and achieve zero GHG emissions by 2050, to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5°C or less. 

In recent years, various companies have become increasingly interested in carbon emissions throughout the life cycles of their products and services (carbon footprint), and understanding GHG emissions related to “transportation” has become an important issue for these companies.

The Global RoRo Community also aims to standardize GHG emission calculation methods for marine transportation, which currently differ from company to company, to ensure an accurate and fair understanding of carbon emissions.

“Going forward, through fair and transparent discussions with Global Ro-Ro Community members, we will work to develop international accounting guidance for GHG emissions,” NYK officials commented.

The goal of the new community is in line with NYK’s decarbonization strategy. The shipowner recently revealed that it will use STAX Engineering’s emissions capture and control technology to recover exhaust gases from car carriers.

This technology makes capturing and controlling exhaust gases possible without installing additional equipment on the vessel. NYK plans to use this technology to provide exhaust gas capture services for NYK-operated car carriers at major ports throughout California.