Port of Helsinki achieves carbon neutrality

At the start of 2025, Finland’s Port of Helsinki achieved the target of making its own operations carbon neutral but continues efforts to reduce the total emissions generated in the port area.

“We have managed to minimise our own carbon dioxide emissions as a result of our climate work. This is an important milestone for us in our long-term work towards more sustainable shipping,” Ville Haapasaari, CEO of the Port of Helsinki, commented.

“But our work does not end there. In future, we will be increasingly focusing on finding low-carbon solutions in cooperation with our partners, customers and stakeholders.”

To reach this goal, the port has implemented a variety of measures to reduce its energy consumption, in addition to procuring required energy from zero-carbon sources. The port also purchases a small amount of voluntary carbon offset credits to compensate for its remaining climate emissions.

The Port of Helsinki set the goal of making its own operations carbon neutral back in 2019. The goal concerns the port company’s own emissions, which include emissions generated as a result of the heating and electricity used in the port area and buildings, the fuel consumption of the port’s own vehicles and machinery, and business travel.

The port achieved its carbon neutrality goal as planned at the start of this year. During the carbon neutrality program’s reference year of 2015, the port company generated 3,463 tonnes of carbon dioxide (t CO2). By the end of 2024, these emissions had decreased by 63%.

The latest major change was that since the beginning of 2025, the district heating procured by the port is also produced with renewable energy. With this change, the Port of Helsinki has implemented all the measures planned so far to achieve the emissions reduction targets set for its own operations.

The remaining emissions, i.e. 2.6% of the emissions in the reference year, are compensated for with carbon offset credits.

“It should be noted, however, that the concept of carbon neutrality has been clarified in recent years, calling into question whether carbon neutrality can be achieved through the use of carbon offset credits. As such, work to reduce offsetting continues, and the port will continue to assess new opportunities to promote its sustainable development goals,” the Port of Helsinki said.

The Port of Helsinki added it follows the global greenhouse gas (GHG) standard in its emissions calculations. The port’s climate work as regards its own operations and procured energy is based on the principle of ‘avoid, reduce and compensate for emissions’.

The order of priority of climate measures is:

1. reduce energy consumption;

2. procure necessary energy from low/zero-emission energy sources;

3. purchase carbon offset credits to compensate for remaining emissions.

Climate work is about cooperation

However, the port’s own emissions represent only a small share of the total emissions generated in the port area. During the reference year of the carbon neutrality program, they accounted for approximately 4% of the total emissions generated by the port area.

In recognition of this, the objectives of the port’s climate work extend beyond the direct emissions from its own operations and resources and the emissions generated as a result of its energy consumption procured from elsewhere to the entire value chain, including shipping, machinery and heavy transport.

The Port of Helsinki’s operations also include major port infrastructure construction projects, the greenhouse gas emissions of which the port actively strives to reduce. According to the GHG standard, construction emissions are part of the port’s value chain emissions.

“We will be making more extensive use of life cycle calculations tailored to us in projects in order to assess and minimise not only emission surges from the materials used in construction but also their entire life cycle emissions,” Andreas Slotte, Port of Helsinki’s Head of Sustainability & HSEQ, noted.

“We also engage in extensive international environmental cooperation with various actors, among others, actors operating on the shipping route between Helsinki and Tallinn. Taking the entire travel chain into account and cooperation are essential for achieving our objectives,” Slotte confirmed.

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