A new maritime community convening Roll on – Roll off (Ro-Ro) shipping stakeholders
Amsterdam, May 7 - Smart Freight Centre (SFC) hosted the official Global Ro-Ro Community kick-off meeting during its annual flagship event, Smart Freight Week, in Amsterdam on April 23. The aim of launching the Global Ro-Ro Community is to establish an ISO 14083 / GLEC compliant global standard for scope 3 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions accounting for deep-sea Ro-Ro shipping, by bringing together stakeholders involved in the transportation of finished vehicles by sea i.e. carriers (shipping lines) and shippers (OEMs).
SFC in collaboration with ECG – The Association of European Vehicles Logistics published the first harmonized methodology to account for GHG emissions from Ro-Ro operations in the summer of 2023. SFC – envisioning that the Ro-Ro GHG emissions accounting guidance document could pave the way for a collaborative partnership between Ro-Ro carriers, and cargo owners (e.g., OEMs among others) – started the stakeholders’ engagement process in late 2023.
The Global Ro-Ro Community is launched with notable carrier members such as Wallenius Wilhelmsen and NYK Line and third-party verifiers such as ClassNK, among others. The overall goal agreed by the members is to “Establish uniform standards to accelerate the decarbonization process within the Ro-Ro shipping industry, creating common ground for fair competition between carriers in terms of scope 3 GHG emissions accounting”.
The kick-off meeting on April 23 was attended by the initial community members as well as other major deep-sea Ro-Ro / PCTC (Pure Car, Truck Carrier) operators from Japan, Korea, Europe and Latin America, and some well-known verification bodies and cargo owners. The Ro-Ro community aims to develop a new methodology, based on the methodology launched last year. SFC envisages completing the first draft of the methodology, targeted at deep-sea Ro-Ro operations, by September 2024 and the final draft by the end of year for shipping lines to be able to use it for emissions accounting beginning 2025.
SFC calls the worldwide Ro-Ro shipping stakeholders to join this global Ro-Ro community through which the participating shipping lines, verifiers, cargo-owners, and other stakeholders will discuss and agree on global standards of GHG emissions accounting for deep sea Ro-Ro Shipping by reviewing and building on the Ro-Ro GHG emissions accounting guidance document developed by ECG and SFC, and learning from the experiences and knowledge of SFC’s well established programs such as GLEC and Clean Cargo.
Please contact kanu.jain@smartfreightcentre.org for any inquiries.