As Europe’s busiest seaport, Rotterdam is buzzing with conversations about climate change, clean energy, and building the vessels of tomorrow. In today’s episode, we speak with Katarin Van Orshaegen, the Commercial Lead at GoodShipping, a Dutch-based company that guides ship owners who are ready to look beyond fossil fuels but don’t know where to start.
Speaking from her office overlooking the port of Amsterdam, we discussed the problems and opportunities ship owners face when deciding how to fuel their cargo vessels in an era of more choices, legislation around decarbonization, environmentally aware and engaged customers, costly lawsuits, and aging fleets.
She pointed out that in 2021, manufacturers who import and export overseas have very few options to reduce the Scope 3 emissions created by moving their goods across the oceans.
Carbon offsetting is usually the choice of those manufacturers; however, carbon offsetting doesn’t directly reduce the emissions, it simply pays a premium price for being a polluter.
GoodShipping enters the picture as the first sustainable shipping initiative in the world, offering companies the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint by switching their cargo shipping activities to biofuel. So far, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive as evidenced by winning clients like IKEA and being highlighted as carbon insetting frontrunners by DHL and Smart Freight Center (SFC)
Through this interview, Katarin details how two Dutch, purpose driven sister companies make this possible:
– GoodShipping customers finance the introduction of biofuels in the fuel mix, insetting their scope 3 emissions.
– GoodFuels produce sustainable biofuels from many types of waste, then deliver the biofuel to the selected vessel within a fleet.
We offer a huge thanks to Katarin for teaching us about carbon insetting, the Mass Balance principle and for clarifying that drop-in biofuels DO NOT require ship owners to retrofit the fuel apparatus in their vessels.
Good Shipping is now available to US companies.