Crowley Commits to Net-Zero GHG Emissions By 2050

U.S.-based shipping company Crowley has committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across by 2050 across its entire business. To track progress and promote visibility into its emissions reductions, Crowley will be linking up with tech giant Salesforce to develop a maritime-specific GHG monitoring and modeling platform.

In order to reach its target, Crowley estimates that it will need to reduce overall emissions by 4.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, or the equivalent of removing more than 900,000 cars from the road every year. The company says the commitment is “aligned with the latest climate science to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

“Crowley is on a mission to become the most sustainable and innovative maritime and logistics company in the Americas,” said Tom Crowley, chairman and CEO. “Working together with our customers, suppliers, policymakers and others across our value chain, we can meet the climate crisis head on.” 

As part of its goal, Crowley says it’s creating partnerships across the industry with government and non-governmental organizations to collaboratively achieve decarbonization and climate action, including the Blue Sky Maritime Coalition, which is focused on the North American maritime value chain, and the World Shipping Council focusing on the global container shipping industry.

“Crowley’s value chain accounts for over 80% of our emissions across the enterprise. Collaboration with customers and partners is key to our mutual success reaching net-zero emissions using science-based standards,” said Alisa Praskovich, vice president of sustainability. “By creating mutual accountability, we will spur innovation through the open sharing of ideas.”

The company says reducing GHG emissions is “a mission critical issue to Crowley’s stakeholders,” based on results from a recent materiality assessment and survey. “With a net zero commitment across all three scopes, the company will operationalize its emissions reduction,” the company said.   

“First and foremost, achieving net-zero emissions is the right thing to do for our planet and deeply aligns with Crowley’s purpose. It is our responsibility as a leader to anticipate evolving stakeholder and customer expectations,” said Ray Fitzgerald, chief operating officer. 

To promote visibility into its total emissions footprint, Crowley is engaging with Salesforce to co-develop a greenhouse gas emissions monitoring and modeling platform that will provide benchmarking, transparency and customized disclosures. 

“We’re proud to be supporting Crowley, our first-to-market customer in the maritime industry, in their sustainability journey to track and reduce their carbon footprint with Salesforce Sustainability Cloud,” said Ari Alexander, GM of Salesforce Sustainability Cloud. “With Sustainability Cloud, Crowley can now have a 360 view of its carbon footprint, with automated dashboards that provide real-time, actionable insights so they can take meaningful climate action across their supply chain.”

Other activities to date include introducing an all-electric tugboat and development of alternative energy vessels and offshore wind services. Crowley has formed a New Energy division that will provide offshore wind services in the U.S. and is developing a program that will allow customers to select more sustainable fuels.

In the coming months, Crowley anticipates submitting its long-and short-term emission reduction goals to the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and is set to release an enterprise-wide sustainability roadmap and complete its inaugural sustainability report in 2022.