Green Marine Green Marine
By Julie Gedeon

Green Marine Europe to include shipyards performance indicators

European perspective

Significant interest from the European shipyard industry in the Green Marine Europe environmental certification program has been present from the outset. Green Marine Europe works in partnership with Green Marine's North American program to establish the new sector's performance indicators.

Green Marine Europe held a round table at Euromaritime in Marseilles in June 2022 to further gauge that interest. “There was clearly a strong motivation by shipyard operators to kick off a green program for this industry,” says Romain Benoît, Green Marine Europe’s outreach officer.

“The operators are fully aware that even if their business is not readily visible by citizens, the public expects them to improve environmental protection, which is also a request by employees,”
Benoît says. “European Union regulations are also becoming more stringent with additional requirements expected to be shortly put in place.”

He thanks Boris Federovsky, a retired technical and economic advisor at the Groupement des Industries de Constrution en Activités Navales (GICAN) and current member of Green Marine Europe’s steering committee, for spurring the interest of shipyard operators in the program.

Some of Europe’s ship owners are likewise keen to have shipyard performance indicators in place. “There are definitely some, such as Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, that want to be able to show that they are seeking best environmental practices for the maintenance, repair and retrofitting of their vessels,” Benoît says.

Broad representation

The Green Marine Europe’s working group established to develop the performance indicators consists of shipyard representatives from the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal and France.

We’re aiming to complete the criteria for the shipyard indicators this summer and to announce in mid-October the names of the shipyards participating with plans to report on their environmental performance in 2024.

Romain Benoît, Green Marine Europe

Source: Monaco Marine

Discussions began last September with monthly online meetings to discuss the initial performance indicators on community impacts, greenhouse gases and air pollutants, and waste management. Two half-day meetings in person at la Ciotat Shipyards (owned by Monaco Marine) in mid-April focused on developing the indicators for spill prevention, community relations and environmental leadership. “We’re still discussing whether the environmental leadership performance indicator will be optional or mandatory at first,” Benoît adds.

European considerations

A key part of the discussions has been to examine the definition of shipyards so that it encompasses European operations but remains aligned with Green Marine’s North American program. “This is why our regular communications with Véronique Trudeau, a Green Marine program manager in North America, are so important,” Benoît says.

 

“We also want to consider that many European shipyards are already ISO 14001 certified and how that should be equivalent to certain Green Marine Europe criteria so that we don’t have participants unnecessarily evaluating certain aspects of their environmental efforts twice,” he adds.

Another key consideration in the European Union is the Solvent Emissions portion of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) that applies to marine coatings. The Best Available Techniques Reference (BREF) document related to volatile organic compounds (VOC) is due to be revised this year. Industry stakeholders have made their comments, but it’s not yet known how regulators might change this document in terms of managing different types and/or amounts of VOCs at a facility. Currently, shipyards of a certain size must report what they have transported in terms of types and amounts of pollutants to recycling/waste process facilities.

As in North America, the Green Marine Europe team is looking at the laws already in place in the European Union, according to EU directives, but also regional and municipal laws that should be considered for the program’s Level 1 monitoring of regulations, and to ensure that Levels 2 through 5 are sufficiently demanding but attainable.

“We might also need to change some of the terminology already in place for the North American shipyards so that it makes more sense for our European participants, but otherwise we’re certainly aiming to have the same framework, indicators and criteria on both continents,” Benoît affirms.

There’s every intention to have Green Marine Europe to be in step with the Green Marine program in North America so there’s consistency, and to later add or revise criteria as required in tandem as far as possible.

Romain Benoît, GME