In 2019 Ham­burg Port Au­thor­ity (HPA) will in­tro­duce a port fee en­vi­ron­men­tal com­po­nent for in­land ves­sels and wa­ter­crafts op­er­at­ing in the port that will be taken into ac­count when cal­cu­lat­ing the port fees and charges due. HPA will also widen the scope of the port fee en­vi­ron­men­tal com­po­nent for seago­ing ships and raise the port fees and charges for most types of traf­fic by 1.6 per cent, which is still below the in­fla­tion rate. Ex­cep­tion­ally large ves­sel dis­counts and tran­ship­ment re­bates as well as caps will re­main mostly un­changed, in par­tic­u­lar con­sid­er­ing that work on the fair­way ad­just­ment has not started yet.

“By in­tro­duc­ing the port fee en­vi­ron­men­tal com­po­nent and widen­ing its scope re­spec­tively, we sup­port ship­ping com­pa­nies in their ef­forts to im­prove sus­tain­abil­ity,” says Jens Meier, CEO of HPA.

About the port fee en­vi­ron­men­tal com­po­nent

Com­ing next year, a por­tion of the port fees and charges will be cal­cu­lated based on en­gine cer­tifi­cates is­sued pur­suant to the Cen­tral Com­mis­sion for Nav­i­ga­tion on the Rhine [ZKR] and non-road-mo­bile-ma­chin­ery [NRMM] reg­u­la­tions, which must be sub­mit­ted for in­land ves­sels and port-op­er­at­ing wa­ter­crafts. The cer­tifi­cates state the en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance of a ship’s en­gines. Low-emis­sions ships will be granted dis­counts/re­bates, and sur­charges will be im­posed on more pol­lut­ing ships or ships for which no cer­tifi­cates have been sub­mit­ted. 

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Ship Index (ESI) dis­count, one of the HPA’s emis­sions-re­duc­ing in­cen­tive schemes al­ready in place, con­tin­ues to apply to seago­ing ships. Ship­ping com­pa­nies have re­sponded well to the ESI index. World­wide more than 7,000 ships are ESI-cer­ti­fied, and over 50 ports and other sup­port­ing bod­ies pro­mote en­vi­ron­men­tal friend­li­ness through their own in­cen­tive schemes.