Environmental work ongoing in Port of Turku

In autumn 2023, Port of Turku is moving on to make emission calculations about land traffic. Calculations are based on data from gate operating systems, which collect data on how many vehicles drive through the gates.

“We aim to get a comprehensive overview of greenhouse gas emissions generated by different emission sources in our port area”, says Markku Alahäme, Technical Director at Port of Turku.

Therefore, Port of Turku also plans to make emission calculations regarding the use of work equipment in the port area. When it´s time for calculations, data must be requested from three port operators running a business in the port area.

“We will need information on the number and type of machines. Before calculations, we also need to decide if calculations are based on fuel consumption or operating hours”, considers Alahäme.

Automated emissions calculations facilitate environmental reporting

The need for emission calculations is based on national and European Union environmental regulations. Once a year, Port of Turku conducts a report for authorities about environmental effects.

“Automated emissions calculations facilitate environmental reporting for sure”, says Alahäme.

He describes how easy it is to utilise automatically generated and visualised calculation reports. Visualised reports are ready to use for reporting but also for marketing purposes, for example.

Before digital tools like GISGRO, making similar calculations, such as calculations for zoning or applying for an environmental permit, started by collecting data manually from different sources. Projects took many months from the start to the calculation phase.

Emission calculation has come a long way from manual work to digital systems like GISGRO, which can use integrations for 3rd party systems, like port gate systems, to get even real-time data for calculations.

Continuous improvements in environmental work

In Port of Turku, the work for the environment is based on a certified environmental system. Continuous improvements like investments in electric cars are made to decrease emissions caused by port operations by 40 percent before 2025.

“To succeed in our environmental work, we are eager to get real-time calculations from Green to regularly monitor the effects of environmental investments for emissions. That would mean more integrations than just to the PMIS”, considers Alahäme.

Annually produced emissions calculations are interesting when wanting to get an overview of trends. Emission calculations have been carried out at the Port of Turku since 2008 with the predecessor of GISGRO Green. Two years ago, they started to use GISGRO Green.

“Our goal is to minimise the environmental impacts of our operations on land, at sea, and in air. For us, environmental work is an ever-developing process that proceeds step by step. With GISGRO Green, we have more visualised data on how we succeed in decreasing emissions”, says Alahäme.