Waterfront decarbonization: win/win opportunities for electric utilities, key customers and stakeholders

Decarbonization of waterfront activities offers electric utilities, port owners and operators, government agencies, and private companies many opportunities to work together to advance their organizational objectives while creating significant economic and environmental benefits for their customers and constituents. For electric utilities and system operators, electrification of port operations provides a major opportunity for new sales in a generally declining commercial and industrial market. Moreover, many of these new loads will occur off-peak, providing for higher system capacity utilization and absorption of intermittent output from wind resources. Port authorities and their tenants will see many benefits of electrification, including improved logistic operations, improved environmental conditions for workers, cruise passengers, and neighbors, and compliance with current and pending environmental regulations

 

Every day at major ports, thousands of heavy-duty trucks transfer containers and bulk cargo from the docks to off-site transfer stations or their final destination. Nearly all of this “drayage” activity is powered by Class 8b tractor trailers using diesel engines. As of 2016, drayage trucking contributed 15% of total large Particulate Matter, 10% of NO_x, and 19% of GHG emissions attributable to port operations. Recent changes in heavy engine emission standards and technology have opened opportunities to significantly reduce air pollution and GHG emissions from drayage, as well as potential to reduce operating and maintenance costs for drayage truck owners and operators.

 

In this series of white papers, DNV draws on the company’s experience serving the electric and maritime industries to: