Estimating shipping emissions – A case study for cargo Port of Zadar, Croatia

Reducing air pollutant emissions and energy consumption, as a necessary step to make ports more sustainable, is one of the crucial tasks and challenges of port management. Some of the port strategies to meet the term “green port” usually include reducing fuel consumption from vessels and vehicles in ports. This paper estimates the emission inventory of maritime traffic for the cargo Port of Zadar. For this research, emissions from cargo ships are estimated in the period from January 01. 2018 until October 01. 2019. The “bottom-up” methodology has been applied for estimating emissions, which includes detailed data on the ship’s characteristics (engine power, the load factor, fuel type, the emission factor) and time spent cruising and hotelling. The emissions from cargo ships have been estimated for three ship’s activities: cruising in the reduced speed zone, hotelling (time spent at berth), and maneuvering. The emission results (tons/year) refer to the pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur oxides (SOx), particulate matter (PM), volatile organic compounds (VOC), and carbon dioxide (CO2) which represents greenhouse gases. Estimating emission inventory is the first step for planning effective port air quality control. Some recommendations for reducing emissions in port areas are emphasized in this paper.