SSI, CBS Maritime to define sustainability criteria for marine fuels

The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI) and Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Maritime have set up a new partnership with the aim of defining the sustainability criteria of the alternative fuels under consideration for shipping’s decarbonisation and their certification.

As explained, no sustainability standard nor related certification scheme currently exists for marine fuels.

Once developed, SSI and CBS Maritime’s partnership will apply these criteria to assess the alternative fuels currently being explored for zero-emission shipping.

The criteria are also expected to be fed into a number of decarbonisation initiatives across the maritime and energy sectors. 

SSI plans to subsequently engage with certification bodies to facilitate the development of a sustainability standard or certification scheme for marine fuels.

The collaboration is carried out under the Green Shipping Project, an international research partnership managed jointly by CBS Maritime and the Centre for Transportation Studies at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Sauder School of Business in Vancouver.

The project was launched in 2017 and is a collaboration of 18 universities and 19 government, industry, and NGO partners. It is focused on five areas of research: Trade and Logistics; Green Ports; Innovation; Stakeholders; and Value Chains.

“Today, we have no clarity nor consensus on the sustainability issues surrounding the fuels being explored for shipping’s decarbonisation, and the criteria to assess their sustainability remain undefined. This work will contribute to this debate and ultimately, inform the selection of one or more winning options for zero-emission shipping,” Andrew Stephens, Executive Director at SSI said.

We believe that university-industry collaboration is critically important for the achievement of sustainable growth and industry transformation, commercialization and competitiveness, as well for the advancement of academia and higher education. High-quality academic research is pivotal in creating new scientific knowledge that industry does not possess, nor can create on its own,” Dr. Henrik Sornn-Friese, Co-Director of the Green Shipping Project and Director and Associate Professor at CBS Maritime added.

“Our partnership with SSI is extraordinary in bringing together a global network of stakeholders in resolving one of the biggest challenges in today’s international maritime shipping”