Panama Canal aims to be “carbon neutral” before end of this decade

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Panama Canal aims to be “carbon neutral” and eliminate CO2 emissions before the end of this decade, the waterway’s administrator Ricaurte Vásquez said on Sunday, April 25.

“Before the end of this decade the Panama Canal will be carbon neutral, we are going to eliminate carbon emissions, and that is a strategic task to which the Canal is committed,” said Vasquez to a local TV network.

The issue, according to Vásquez, is first to define how this translates into the Canal’s daily operation. The administrator explained that the plan is to come up with a design for “environmentally robust” canal facilities, which opens up a greater opportunity to establish a new concept for the transit of ships through the canal and “a totally different price opportunity than the historical one” dictated by length, beam and draft.

“This will mean that our boats and tugboats will have to change technology to use non-fossil fuels, reduce the carbon footprint emitted by the Panama Canal, and to that same extent take advantage of the opportunity that this offers,” the administrator explained.

In this sense, he stated that the aim is for the carbon footprint of ships transiting the Panama Canal “to be minimal,” therefore, he said, “ships generating a very high carbon footprint will have to pay a higher price toll for transit.”

The Panama Canal launched last January a platform where it will publish monthly data on CO2 emissions saved by ships that chose to transit the inter-oceanic waterway.

In 2020, the Panama Canal helped reduce more than 13 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions compared to alternative routes, such as Suez, Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope.

Vásquez stressed that “the costs of protecting the environment have to be paid by mankind, and we have to recover those protection costs incurred by the Panama Canal through our pricing mechanisms.”

The 82-kilometer-long waterway, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, operates with a system of locks at different levels, which are supplied by two artificial lakes in the Chagres River basin.

The artificial lakes Gatun (1913) and Alhajuela (1935) supply not only the inter-oceanic waterway, through which 6% of world trade passes, but also 55% of Panama’s population.

Since 2020, the Panama Canal has been levying surcharges for the use of fresh water for the transit of ships as part of a plan to address the shortage caused by the consequences of the climate crisis, and to finance future plans to ensure its full availability.

“If we do not maintain our water sources, the Canal can not operate, and it is fresh water, it is not sea water as in the case of (the Suez Canal), so the concern for maintaining the Canal’s water sources is critical, and that is why we are establishing totally new criteria,” Vásquez said.