Doing enough to meet the legal requirements on environmental care is one thing – going further, on a voluntary basis, is quite another. This was the clear message at a recent Cruise Gateway North Sea Region event.

The port and city of Gothenburg provided a green agenda and green inspiration for members of Cruise Gateway, an EU-funded project.

The partners in Cruise Gateway joined a Best Practice Tour hosted by the City of Gothenburg, the Port of Gothenburg and Goteborg & Co., which included visits to ferry and cruise terminals at the port as well as other environmentally friendly facilities.

The Port of Gothenburg is a leader in terms of sustainability, setting the environmental pace in a number of initiatives; it has a range of quays equipped for cold ironing (onshore power supply) and more than 30% of all ships calling in the port use OSP.

Environmental considerations were an important part of recent terminal concession negotiations, and the port also offers reduced tariffs for ships using low-sulphur fuel. There are plans to build an LNG terminal at the port by 2015; and by that year, Gothenburg Port Authority will be a carbon-neutral company.

There were some important examples for the partners of Cruise Gateway, a project which is looking to promote and expand cruising in the North Sea Region but in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way.

The Best Practice Tour included visits to:

• The West Sweden Tourist Board, to hear about the board’s integrated quality scheme with its holistic sustainable approach for the whole nation;
• The energy-efficient Gothia Tower, a hotel, exhibition and conference facility now being extended, with the whole building to be certified in accordance with the international environmental standard, BREEAM;
• The ‘climate smart’ Gothenburg Landvetter Airport.

Among the speakers was Anders Carlberg, head of maritime strategy and marine development at Region Västra Götaland, who talked about sustainability and marine environmental issues in the region.

“The Best Practice Tour focused on inspiration for a sustainable destination and the port’s work on sustainability,” said Anna Cognell, representing City of Gothenburg on the Gothenburg Environmental Administration.

“The lessons we learned from the event will be taken forward in the Cruise Gateway project, tying in with further work on sustainability. Later in the project we will consider and bring together Best Practice examples and consider their application across the North Sea Region.

“These two days of visits and presentations looked at doing more than what the law requires. You can comply with the law – that is OK. But you can go ahead and do more, and the aim here was to demonstrate how that can work.”