Classifying maritime port emissions reporting

Despite the International Maritime Organization’s ambitious goal to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by 50%, a large portion of maritime ports do not publicly provide port air emissions reporting. It is suspected that the lack of publicly available reporting constitutes its internal absence as well. To provide a systematic picture on the transparency of emissions reporting, we develop an assessment method and apply it to the world’s top 49 container ports. Less than half of the assessed ports provide publicly available emissions reporting. The application of the proposed classification scheme indicates a port’s maturity towards emissions reporting, taking into account a detailed content analysis. Thereby, stakeholders’ communication and guidance towards improving emissions reporting, as part of environmental sustainability reporting, is facilitated. • Empirical study of emissions reporting by top 49 container ports. • Less than half of the ports provide publicly available emissions reporting. • We propose a classification scheme for emissions reporting.