The Greening of Terminal Concessions in Seaports

Theo Notteboom,Jasmine Lam

doi:10.3390/su10093318

Abstract

Port authorities around the world are pursuing a greening of port management in view of safeguarding their license to operate, and increasing their economic and environmental competitiveness. This paper analyzes how port authorities, via the design and implementation of concession agreements, can contribute to a further greening of port management. The paper presents a typology of green instruments applicable to a terminal concession setting. The instruments are evaluated on overall feasibility and suitability in a concession context, but also on more specific criteria related to implementation issues, contribution to green strategies, and targets of port authorities and regulatory/enforcement aspects. The evaluation matrix is based on the output of a structured workshop with port managers and concession experts in a sample of European ports. We demonstrate that a variety of regulatory, investment, and pricing measures are available to port authorities to include green targets in terminal concession agreements. Not all instruments have the same likeliness of being embraced or implemented by port authorities, in part because of a low perceived contribution, high associated regulation costs, or simply because the port authority is unlikely to have jurisdiction in that specific area. Measures related to information reporting and some types of harm-based standards, design standards, and technology specifications are relatively easy to implement in a concession setting. The results also show that many of the measures with a higher expected contribution to innovation and environmental objectives are typically also the ones with higher regulation costs, which might post a higher complexity in terms of their implementation in a concession setting. We further argue that initiatives toward the greening of concession procedures can only reap full benefits if these actions are embedded in a chain approach toward the environment (ship, port, terminal, warehouse, and inland transport).

Highlights

In many countries around the world, governments and public port authorities have retreated from port operations in the belief that enterprise-based port services and operations would allow for greater flexibility, more competition, higher efficiency in the market, and a better response to port users’ demands
In line with the above, this paper focuses on the following research question: Which instruments can port authorities (PAs) use in terminal concession policy to contribute to a virtuous cycle that leads to a stronger consideration of the PA’s environmental objectives by terminal operators and to a further greening of port management?
The experts from the port authorities and academia were asked to give a score on each of the criteria for each instrument. In view of this step, we identified a range of concrete instruments that port authorities could possibly consider to implement in a terminal concession context

Summary

Introduction

In many countries around the world, governments and public port authorities have retreated from port operations in the belief that enterprise-based port services and operations would allow for greater flexibility, more competition, higher efficiency in the market, and a better response to port users’ demands. Many ports have adopted some sort of landlord port authority model. Under this model, the landlord port authority typically is a separate entity under public law established by a specific legislation with the capacity to conclude contracts, to enforce standards, and to make rules and regulations applicable within the port area. The concessioning of terminal operations to private operators has become common practice [2]. A terminal concession is a grant by a government or public port authority to a (private) terminal operator in view of providing port terminal services

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Results

Conclusion