Green lanes

Greenlanes is a scheme designed to provide an incentive to ship operators to fit equipment and technologies which reduce the amount of fossil fuel that ships use.

 

Ships are separated into categories: tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, chemical carriers, gas carriers, car carriers etc.

 

At present, when a ship arrives in port or at a canal, the custom is for it to take its place at the back of the queue. This is a simple ?first come first served? principal and it is fairly universal.

 

Usually, ports have separate facilities for each category of ship and so there are separate queues operated for each type of ship. (In the case of the Suez Canal, faster ships are placed at the front of the queue.)

 

In contrast, a port that operates Greenlanes will place the ship with the fewest points at the head of its respective queue.

 

At the start, every ship is given 100 points.

 

Every piece of equipment or technology that reduces the need for fossil fuel, reduces the number of points so if the ship is fitted with a piece of equipment that reduces fuel consumption by 4% its points are lowered to 96.

 

So ships arriving with independently verified green credentials would simply go to the front of the queue.

 

Like most areas of freight transport, quick turnaround time is a commercial imperative, so it?s a real incentive yet its implementation has virtually no costs. It?s quick, easy, effective and cheap.