Short Sea Shipping

Short Sea Shipping as an alternative for road transport over long distances

Short Sea Shipping (SSS) is sea transport of goods or passengers where no oceans are crossed. SSS is promoted strongly by both international and national governments as an alternative for road transport over long distances. To justify this support with a scientific study, TML investigated the differences in emissions between the 2 modes. Together with road transport and shipping companies, data was collected for various parallel corridors. TML calculated emissions using this detailed data, with great accuracy, so that a fair comparison between the modes was possible. The results were presented to the Flemish Minister-President at a press conference.

The study indicated that there is no clear " winner" in this comparative study; SSS scores better than road transport in the field of CO2 emissions, but scores less for NOx, SO2 and PM emissions. CO2 has an impact on climate change; this is a global problem. NOx, SO2 and PM have an impact on regional air quality. The stringent emission regulation of recent years has made road transport remarkably cleaner. A similar wave of environment regulations did not occur for the maritime sector. As a result, at present, shipping performs worse compared to road transport for most  polluents. Recently however, new steps are taken to reduce emissions from shipping.

reports

Final report is available here (pdf, in Dutch)

2/09/2008 Presentation Kris Vanherle (pdf, in Dutch)

28/08/2008 Press conference Ghent (pdf, in Dutch)

period

2008

funded by

Shortsea Promotion Centre Flanders

researchers

Kris Vanherle

contact

Kris Vanherle

+32 16 31.77.38