Green Corridor Advisory Board

The concept of green shipping corridors has emerged as a way to cut through the complexity of maritime shipping decarbonization by focusing development, deployment, testing, and refining of zero-emission solutions on specific routes where conditions are promising and there is potential for accelerated action. As zero-emission testing grounds, these corridors can help jumpstart the energy transition within the shipping sector and align all the necessary pieces of the zero-emission shipping value chain of the future. These cross-sectoral partnership efforts typically involve engagement with ports, vessel owners and operators, cargo owners, fuel producers, and policymakers, among others key actors across the shipping value chain. Through green shipping corridors, stakeholders can align private investment through chains of offtake agreements on a manageable scale and demonstrate the technical and commercial viability of ZE shipping.

Climate-leading cargo owners can accelerate the ZE transition by providing support to green shipping corridor efforts that maintain a high Paris-aligned ambition. Cargo owner input during the development of these efforts is also essential to ensure they will work from a business point of view. However, with a growing number of green shipping corridor collaborations around the world, cargo owner capacity to engage in each individual corridor effort separately may become constrained.

Therefore, coZEV is developing a green corridor advisory board. This mechanism will allow green corridor partnerships around the world to efficiently connect with and gather input from cargo owners in the course of development and implementation of plans and collaborations. Through the advisory board, cargo owners will be able to stay updated about progress and provide input to the creation and implementation of these green corridor efforts.

While trans-oceanic green corridor routes are of particular importance to cargo owners that ship goods all around the world, the advisory board will also be interested in regional or local green corridor initiatives that are piloting ZE fuels and technologies capable of being scaled up and used on longer routes.

Los Angeles - Shanghai Green Shipping Corridor

Los Angeles and Shanghai announced a partnership of stakeholders from across the shipping value chain to create a first-of-its-kind transpacific green shipping corridor on one of the world’s busiest container shipping routes.

Convened by c40 Cities and the Ports of Shanghai and Los Angeles, and in collaboration with industry leaders and the Aspen Institute's Shipping Decarbonization Initiative, facilitators of Cargo Owners for Zero Emission Vessels (coZEV), the partnership has agreed to work on an initiative to establish a green shipping corridor to decarbonize maritime shipping between the U.S. and China. The partnership intends to work together to achieve these goals by developing a “Green Shipping Corridor Implementation Plan” by the end of calendar year 2022 that will include deliverables, milestones, and roles for the partnership.

Through this effort, project partners will work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the movement of cargo between the cities of Shanghai and Los Angeles throughout the 2020s, including by introducing the use of vessels that operate with zero greenhouse gases on a lifecycle basis. Maritime decarbonization experts have identified a need for significant commercial deployment of zero-emission vessels and fuels by 2030 in order for the maritime sector to decarbonize in line with Paris Agreement goals. A recent analysis by the Global Maritime Forum explains how establishing voluntary public-private and cross-value chain coalitions through green shipping corridors can enable early adoption of long-term decarbonization solutions for international shipping, which is responsible for three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Through coZEV, multinational companies that rely on maritime shipping will be offered opportunities to contribute to the development and implementation of the Shanghai-Los Angeles green shipping corridor.

If your company is interested in getting involved in the development of a Los Angeles-Shanghai green shipping corridor, please reach out.