The primary environmental impacts of shipping are emissions and discharges. At sea and in port, these outputs are substantially all regulated and compliance is enforced across international, regional and local jurisdictions.

We recognise our responsibility to reduce our operations' impact on air, sea and land, and our Pacific Basin Management System is designed to measure and continually improve every aspect of fleet operations, including our environmental outputs.

Ambition

As a leading dry bulk ship owner and operator, Pacific Basin seeks to further improve our fleet scale, optimise our performance and offer flexible and reliable service while striving to minimise environmental impact. We take responsibility for decarbonising our fleet, managing our waste, marine discharges and resources consumption, ensuring our ships are primed for proper recycling and minimising our biodiversity impacts as we continue to grow our business.

Commitment to

Decarbonising our fleet

We target to become net zero by 2050 to reduce our impact on climate change by adopting technical and operational measures, preparing for market-based measures and supporting the development and deployment of green fuels and zero-emission vessels.

Minimising our environmental impact

We manage and operate our fleet and offices with a commitment to reducing our resource consumption, waste footprint and biodiversity impacts. We ensure that our older ships that we sell are primed for proper recycling at end of life.

Enhancing and optimising green & safe ship operations

We strive to adopt industry best practices and promote a culture of high standards to ensure environmentally-responsible and safe ship operations through continued investment in training, systems, procedures and technology.

Tracking a Course to Net Zero by 2050

All of our 30 owned ships that are subject to Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) rules attained an average EEDI of 4.76 grams of CO2 per tonne-nautical mile, which exceeds the average required EEDI of 7.72 grams of CO2 per tonne-mile.

All of our owned ships comply with the EEXI rules with 58% of our ships needing engine power limiters (EPL) to comply.

Tackling Environmental Responsibilities

We seek to minimise our impact on the environment from atmospheric emissions, resource consumption and marine discharges.

Our Decarbonisation Strategy

We continue to adopt fuel-efficiency enhancements and practices to ensure that our conventionally-fuelled existing ships are well positioned to comply with applicable global and regional rules and to continue to trade for the foreseeable future. In parallel, we are collaborating and making preparations to achieve the longer-term goal of complete decarbonisation by transitioning to entirely new low-emission vessels and sustainable fuels under development.

Carbon Emissions & Fuel Efficiency

1. Maintaining our high laden-to-ballast ratio
• Our ships are laden with cargo for over 90% of the time because our fleet uniformity and scale and our ship operating and cargo expertise enable us to optimally schedule and combine our ships and cargo for high laden utilisation. That is a significant advantage compared to similar ships in our segment which spend more time in ballast.
2. Modernising our fleet by gradually trading up to younger, larger, more energy-efficient ships
• We renew our fleet through our largely counter-cyclical acquisition of modern Japanese-built or designed second-hand vessels with fuel-efficient hull designs and machinery and the best designs for our trades.
• We will not contract newbuildings until zero-emission-ready ships are available and commercially viable in our segments and the appropriate refuelling infrastructure is being built out globally
3. Adoption of latest energy-efficient operating measures
• Fuel-efficient voyage planning using the latest Continuous Weather Routing services
• Reducing rudder movements and improving course-keeping using advanced self-tuning autopilot systems to automatically adapt to load and weather characteristics
• Avoiding unnecessarily high engine torque in bad weather conditions using real-time propeller-curve displays
• Improved trim and draft optimisation to reduce hull resistance
• Optimising hull cleaning frequency (for reduced drag) using detailed analysis of vessels’ speed and fuel consumption performance over time
• Computer-aided optimisation of cylinder lubrication and machinery overhaul intervals leading to reduced fuel consumption
• Slow steaming at optimal operating speeds
4. Adoption of latest energy-efficiency technologies on our ships
• Fitting propeller boss cap fins, non hub-vortex propellers, rudder bulbs and Mewis ducts to improve propulsion hydrodynamics
• Reshaping propellers for reduced fuel consumption and/or improved torque characteristics
• Optimising combustion pressure by engine tuning
• Applying anti-fouling paints over a larger hull area to reduce drag even when fully laden
• Retrofitting LED lights throughout our ships’ accommodation blocks and engine rooms
5. Supporting the development of potential zero-carbon fuels and vessels
• We engage regularly with the classification societies, engine manufacturers, shipbuilders and other stakeholders who are more directly involved in new fuels and new propulsion R&D, and we also engage with other ship owners and operators who are similarly interested in tracking and contributing to this industry discussion with input from the user’s practical perspective.
• We are members of the Getting to Zero Coalition of over 120 companies committed to exploring how to achieve the goal of developing and rolling out the first deep-sea zero-emission or carbon-neutral ships by 2030. Ammonia and methanol synthesised from green hydrogen are currently among the front-runners in a short list of potential fuels for shipping.
6. Voluntarily offsetting our emissions with carbon credits
• Despite all our initiatives to continually improve our carbon intensity, our operations will still generate carbon emissions for years to come. We wish to offset at least some of these unavoidable emissions and, in 2021, we launched our PB Carbon Neutral Voyage Programme for our customers. We have voluntarily and fully offset the carbon emissions from our global onshore operations in 2021. For more information about our PB Carbon Neutral Voyage Programme, please refer to our Sustainability Report.

For information on our management approach and initiatives addressing other air emissions, marine discharges and waste management, please refer to our Sustainability Report.