ROTTERDAM - The Port of Rotterdam claims to champion sustainability but is the reality matching its marketing?
My investigation into the greenhouse gas monitoring and reporting in the Port and, wider, the Netherlands, shows asevere under-reporting of the second-most important greenhouse gas, methane. This under-reporting is especially severe as thePort develops solutions it claims to be sustainable - LNG for maritime transport, hydrogen for energy - but which will actuallyincrease the Port’s climate impact. Simultaneously, methane emissions in the energy sector can be easily minimised at a low cost- provided they are detected. The situation in the Port illustrates a much wider misunderstanding of greenhouse gas reporting,where even the Dutch government gets confused.The second part of my research focused on a big-picture view of the Port’s energy transition, placing the solutions it is developingand their critiques in a geopolitical context. This article is forthcoming at the beginning of June.
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