In a groundbreaking move, one of the world’s largest marine terminal operators, DP World, recently announced the rolling out of Greenstone Carbon Management and the CarbonNeutral Company’s carbon management and reduction solution. With this, DP World became the first global port operator to deploy carbon management solution.

And with this, DP world’s carbon reduction initiative -- launched two years back -- comes to full circle. The initiative is aimed at reducing the company’s carbon footprint by 27 percent in five years. Measuring and managing emissions happen to be the two most vital parts of the initiative.

In a press release, DP World said that it had already invested in data collection systems at its terminals. In 2010, it commissioned Greenstone to further develop data gathering processes and set-up Greenstone’s Acco2unt carbon management solution tailored to DP World’s methodology, strictly based on the the “Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard.” 

As part of the initiative, Greenstone and DP World also delivered a training program, which enable the professionals working at terminals to upload their data and analyze their performance on an ongoing basis.

According to industry estimates, 90 percent of goods are currently shipped by sea and in this situation, marine terminals play a crucial role in the supply chain. Under this scenario, DP World, which set some strong environmental targets for itself, decided to analyze the impact of its business activities. This led DP World to select Greenstone’s Acco2unt carbon management software.

According to DP World officials, adopting Acco2unt will help DP World drive in its continuous efforts at documenting its carbon footprint. The company claimed that this latest initiative complements company’s other recent successes in the journey to adopt a low-carbon approach. A major among them definitely is being the first international operator to disclose its emissions publicly in the Carbon Disclosure Project.

In a press release, Charles Haine, global environment manager at DP World, said, “The implementation of Greenstone’s Acco2unt software gives us a comprehensive reporting framework with a clear breakdown of our emissions which, in turn, allows us to compare performance across the business and drive continual improvement. The beauty of the software is that we have tailored it to be able to report on the global portfolio while at the same time making it practical for individual terminals to get feedback on their performance. There’s no doubt that Greenstone’s software has automated much of the manual process, which can be prone to human error, and will enable us to develop targeted reduction projects with greater focus, transparency and efficiency.”

Greenstone’s Acco2unt software makes a robust carbon management and accounting solutions, which enables organizations to measure, manage, plan, store and report emission data, track performance on their carbon footprint at multiple organizational levels and to model carbon footprint reduction strategies. Acco2unt can significantly reduce the burden of auditing and reporting for compliance and voluntary reporting purposes. An extensive list of emission sources is included in the software’s calculation covering energy, travel and transport, waste and water. 

Last month, TMCnet reported that Greenstone announced the release of version 2.4 of its Acco2unt carbon management software.