Portwise compensates emissions on all flights: from plan to practice

Why do we fly?

At Portwise, we aim to future-proof logistics and advise our clients around the world how best to achieve this. To make most impact and to deliver quality results to our clients, we believe that face-to-face meetings and travel to client sites are essential. Exploring a (container)terminal onsite with our own eyes and having face-to-face discussions result in a much better understanding of the situation and the challenges at hand.

Therefore, we can minimise our travel but not entirely avoid it. For us to travel in a more sustainable way, we use trains or cars for short distance travels. For longer distances, we fly.

How do we compensate?

To reduce our carbon impact, Portwise has decided to compensate for our flights as per July 2024. We will apply 100% CO2 compensation on all our flights via the Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) program by SkyNRG. We believe SAF to be the most future-proof approach as its main goal is to reduce the total amount of CO2 emitted. SkyNRG is a renowned party in the production and distribution of SAF, allowing us to support this industry as close to the source as possible.

From plan to practice: selecting our preferred compensation option

2023, the insight

In 2023 Portwise started a ‘Footprint Team’ with the aim to measure and possibly reduce our CO2 footprint. From the study we learned which four main emission contributors we have: the office, IT, commuting and customer travel, all in the range 20% to 30% of the total.

2024, the targets

For this year we set objectives for ourselves to reduce our footprint. We defined the target to (1) reduce CO2-emission of the office, IT and commuting by 15% in total, and (2) to select and implement a specific flight compensation method. For target (1) we are well on our way to achieve this. In the next parts of this article, we focus on target (2).

Investigating the options

For target (2), we first identified the main compensation methods, there are two serious alternatives. First method we refer to as project-based compensation which encompasses initiatives like reforestation. As second option, we investigated compensation by means of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), an alternative to regular kerosine.

Both options have been compared in a quantitative way to ensure a correct decision would be made. This meant comparing pros and cons between the two selected methods.

Project-based compensation is a well-established option and can, therefore, be offered for an affordable price. However, no less emissions will be emitted by contributing to these initiatives. The main goal of this method is to offset emission.

SAF strives to close the carbon loop, resulting in less newly emitted CO2. This is achieved by producing SAF from a variety of sustainable resources including, but not limited to, forestry, agricultural waste, used cooking oils, and carbon captured from the air. SAF is a newer initiative resulting in higher compensation prices.

After thorough discussion within the Footprint Team and comparing these relevant characteristics between both methods, SAF was selected as most suitable option to use for our flight compensation. We believe the reduction in newly emitted CO2 is worth the higher price. In addition, the aviation industry has established Net Zero Emission-targets where they have high expectations on implementing SAF more often, planning that 65% of emission reductions come from this upcoming industry by 2050. We also expect this option to mature in the coming years to become better and more affordable.

Investigating the suppliers

Compensation with SAF is often provided by airline companies themselves. However, transparency and reliability are missing or unclear. Therefore, we started to look for an organization that does comply with these values. We compared a number of companies and found that SkyNRG is the right fit for us, as it is a global leader in SAF production, operating since 2010. As SAF is their single focus, all contributions to SkyNRG are used for the right purpose.

Implementing our compensation method within Portwise

Final step of the process is to implement the compensation method, and arrange with SkyNRG. The SkyNRG compensation tool is used to book our flight information in the tool and compensate for the emissions.

Since Portwise wants to be a future-proof company, we take a large part of the cost on ourselves. We also like to create awareness with our customers and have decided to charge EUR 50 to our customers per flight made by a Portwise employee for their project.

Footprint leaflets to work towards a more sustainable future

Portwise staff is informed about our future-proof initiatives via digital brochures we call ‘future-proof leaflets’. These leaflets share information about the impact of activities, and how both Portwise and our employees can contribute to reduce emissions. We did this for all our main emission topics: office, commute, IT and travel.

Steps on our path towards a sustainable future!

Click here if you want to learn more about Portwise and how we use models, tooling, and expertise, to design smarter, more efficient and more sustainable ports and terminals for future-proof logistics around the world.

 

Written by Arjen de Waal, Head of Simulations.