Category Archives: News

News
Pacific Environment announces new California climate policy director 

Pacific Environment welcomes Davina Hurt as its new California Climate Policy Director, effective January 30, 2025. Prior to joining Pacific Environment, Davina Hurt was appointed to the California Air Resources Board by Governor Gavin Newsom in December 2020 and served on the board for more than four years. Ms. Hurt is an attorney, two-term councilwoman and past mayor of the City of Belmont, Calif. With expertise in transportation, energy, waste management and stationary sources, Davina Hurt is dedicated to addressing environmental and social challenges through equity, innovation and bold community leadership.

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News
EPA announces billions of dollars in funding for the Clean Ports Program

EPA is releasing two separate Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs) as part of the $3 billion. The nearly $2.8 billion Zero-Emission Technology Deployment Competition will directly fund zero-emission port equipment and infrastructure to reduce mobile source emissions at U.S. ports. Eligible uses of funding include human-operated and maintained zero-emission cargo handling equipment, harbor craft and other vessels, electric charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure, and a number of other technology investments.

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Parent and child overlooking a busy cargo container harbor.
News
Ports for People Celebrates First Anniversary, Shipping and Ports Wins

The Ports for People campaign is celebrating its first anniversary. The campaign was launched in September 2022 alongside a Ports for Zero-Emission Shipping Playbook to provide guidance for ports working towards a zero-emission future. 

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News
44 Lawmakers ‘Sound the Alarm’ on Threat of LNG Expansion

The senators and representatives signed a letter calling on the Biden administration’s Council on Environmental Quality to give “greater scrutiny” to the LNG supply chain from wellhead to shipping overseas.

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Wall of colorful stacked cargo containers.
News
| Article
Vancouver is Awesome Article: Delta LNG plant fits in new energy framework: FortisBC

Of the five liquefied natural gas projects in B.C. that are either under construction or in the environmental review process, two will need to pass a new provincial sniff test for greenhouse gas intensity.
One of them is FortisBC’s Tilbury Island LNG plant expansion in Delta, which is still working its way through the BC Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) review process. The other is the much larger Ksi Lisims project in Prince Rupert.

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Wall of colorful stacked cargo containers.
News
| NEWS
Clean Air Action Plan Update Surfaces Long Simmering Concerns

Read excerpts of Pacific Environment’s Dawny’all Heydari’s statements made at the latest Clean Air Action Plan update meeting, and click on the link to read the full article in Random Length News.

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Sun setting over smoggy shipping container harbor.
News
| T&E
UK legal obligations on international shipping

Emissions from the UK’s international shipping activities make up more than half of the UK’s total maritime emissions. However, the UK is proposing only to regulate emissions from the domestic fleet, stating in the recent Course to Zero consultation that responsibility for regulating international emissions lies with the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

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Wall of colorful stacked cargo containers.
News
| China Daily
Climate experts call on the US and China to work together on reducing emissions from flights and ships

Climate experts at a Thursday evening webinar urged China and the US to work together to reduce carbon emissions from ship and airplane traffic.

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Parent and child overlooking a busy cargo container harbor.
News
| Pacific Ports Magazine
How ports can right the ship on industry pollution, emissions

In this critical moment for climate action, ports have an opportunity — and a responsibility — to right the ship and move the industry onto a trajectory commensurate with the climate emergency.

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Parent and child overlooking a busy cargo container harbor.
News
| Canary Media
3 ways the new climate law will help clean up dirty US ports

The Inflation Reduction Act includes $3 billion to slash pollution from ports by electrifying machinery, plugging ships into the grid and more.

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Parked cargo container ship next to a port neighborhood.
News
| Maritime Executive
Port of Rotterdam and MPA Singapore announce largest green and digital corridor

Efforts are underway to form the world’s longest green corridor to enable low and zero carbon shipping between the hubs of Singapore in the Far East and Rotterdam in Europe.

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Sun setting over smoggy shipping container harbor.
News
| Maritime Executive
Svitzer tugs reduce CO2 emissions by slow steaming to and from jobs

The shipping industry is discussing slow steaming as a means of reducing emissions and beginning to meet CO2 reduction targets for long-distance ocean routes. Now comes word from A.P. Moller-Maersk’s tugboat operations, Svitzer, that it has been able to achieve similar results for its tugboats during a trial program that they are rolling out across the global fleet.

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Busy cargo container storage harbor.
News
| Canary Media
Cargo ships are notoriously dirty. A new bill aims to clean them up.

The Clean Shipping Act, proposed this week in Congress, would curb CO2 pollution from shipping and accelerate the adoption of nascent technologies.

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Smoky cargo ship entering container harbor.
News
| TradeWinds
Ports must lead, not follow, shipping’s decarbonisation

Decarbonisation is the task of the decade for the global shipping industry. This month alone, conferences in Copenhagen, Athens, Rotterdam and Montreal, and a meeting at the International Maritime Organization, have been hosting discussions on how to reduce and eliminate the shipping industry’s climate-warming pollution.

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Sun setting over cargo container storage harbor.
News
| Splash247
Sparky, the world’s first full sized, electric tugboat, starts operating in Auckland

Ports of Auckland has welcomed a new addition to its fleet, with the arrival of the world’s first full size, ship-handling electric tug. Named Sparky, as voted by New Zealanders in a public vote in 2020, the e-tug ought to result in the saving of approximately 465 tonnes of CO2 in diesel emissions annually and marks another important step on the port’s plans to be totally emissions free by 2040.

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Parent and child overlooking a busy cargo container harbor.
News
| Lloyd's List
Port communities affected by pollution

Study finds 3.8% average methane slip from LNG carrier on roundtrip from US to Belgium. But about 8% of all LNG sent to the smaller generator engines ends up in the atmosphere.

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Parked cargo container ship next to a port neighborhood.
News
| Common Dreams
‘This Is terrifying’: Explosion at Texas gas plant spotlights threat of LNG industry

“We shouldn’t have to live in fear just so gas executives like Michael Smith can get rich,” said one local resident, referring to Freeport LNG’s CEO.

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Parked cargo container ship next to a port neighborhood.
News
| The Guardian
Methane much more sensitive to global heating than previously thought – study

Greenhouse gas has undergone rapid acceleration and scientists say it may be due to atmospheric changes

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Parked cargo container ship next to a port neighborhood.
News
| CleanTechnica
Methane At Sea: Finding the invisible climate killer, so-called “green” (LNG) ships

Infrared images show unburned methane – a potent greenhouse gas – being released from supposedly ‘green’ LNG ships, a damning new investigation by Transport & Environment (T&E) shows. European politicians are playing with fire in their support for LNG, says T&E, with methane over 80 times more climate warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

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Parked cargo container ship next to a port neighborhood.
News
| Hellenic Shipping News
Rapid expansion of US LNG comes with climate costs: environmental group

The likelihood that more US liquified natural gas projects will be built because of the war in Ukraine should prompt US regulators to pay closer attention to the potential climate impacts, according to a report from an environmental advocacy group.

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Smoky cargo ship entering container harbor.
News
| Bloomberg
Methane leaks make LNG-powered ships dirtier than other vessels

Methane leaks from ships using liquefied natural gas as fuel make most of the vessels dirtier than ones using diesel or heavy fuel oil, a new analysis shows.

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Sun setting over smoggy shipping container harbor.
News
| Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
Editorial: Port pollution is surging. Let regulators do their job to protect public health.

Southern California still suffers the nation’s worst-polluted air but it also has a decades-long record of success in fighting smog, which has been achieved largely through stringent regulation, not by cutting deals with polluters. AQMD leaders have shown with recently adopted rules on oil refineries and warehouse logistics centers that they have the authority and political will to take meaningful action against some of the region’s most powerful industries. They can and should do the same with the ports.

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Wall of colorful stacked cargo containers.
News
| A.P. Moller - Maersk Press Statement
A.P. Moller – Maersk accelerates Net Zero emission targets to 2040 and sets milestone 2030 targets

A.P. Moller – Maersk (Maersk) announces new aspiring emissions targets expected to align the company with the Net Zero criteria of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) pathway to limit global warming to 1.5°C. They include a societal commitment to act now and drive material impact in this decade, and a commitment to deliver net zero supply chains to customers by 2040.

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