“Ready for Tomorrow” looks both internally at Associated British Ports’ own operations and outwards, to building greater partnership and collaboration to meet the challenges and grasp the generational opportunities of sustainability.

Henrik L Pedersen, ABP’s CEO, said: “Climate change is an era-defining challenge, but it is also an opportunity to scale innovative new industries to leave an optimistic legacy for generations to come. “ABP is ready for tomorrow. We are committed to working together with industry partners and authorities to turn this generational crisis into a generational opportunity: to create a decarbonised, dramatically more sustainable future and deliver the significant investment, economic growth and thousands of new, good jobs that should come with it.”

For ABP’s own operations “Ready for Tomorrow” identifies five focus areas for action:

• Net Zero
• Air quality
• Biodiversity
• Waste
• Water management.

Each focus area has a programme of action plans – including action ideas from ABP’s employees in our ports and other locations – to achieve ambitious but credible targets. This includes a commitment to reach Net Zero from ABP’s own operations (Scopes 1 and 2) by 2040.

The UK’s Maritime Minister, Baroness Vere, said: “The UK is a pioneer in cutting-edge clean maritime solutions, with hundreds of millions of pounds of government funding being invested in developing greener, cleaner vessels and infrastructure. However, it’s vital that industry also invests in our future, and I’m therefore very pleased to see Associated British Ports doing just that, ensuring we’re Ready for Tomorrow and injecting billions into decarbonising our maritime sector.”

ABP says it has embraced the vital and unique enabling role that ports have for a range of major decarbonisation and sustainability projects. For ABP, this includes continuing to develop its offshore wind manufacturing and support hubs in the Humber and East Anglia, as well as more than doubling its own green power generation.

Its future products portfolio includes developments in South Wales, the Solent, Humber and East Anglia. They cover floating offshore wind (including a major integration port hub centred on Port Talbot), hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, industrial decarbonisation and alternative fuels.

The £2B green growth and decarbonisation plan, says ABP, brings together projects that will deliver major emissions reduction and sustainability improvements for ABP itself with green growth energy transition projects developed in partnership with customers.

Nick Molho, Executive Director of the Aldersgate Group, a sustainable business organisation whose members have a cumulative turnover of around £600B, said: “The launch of ABP’s sustainability strategy marks an important moment in the UK economy’s transition to net zero emissions. Decarbonising ports is not only important in itself, but it is also essential to support the decarbonisation of other key parts of the economy such as energy generation, shipping and heavy industries like steel.

“By taking proactive steps to cut emissions in a part of the economy that is complex to decarbonise, ABP is demonstrating true leadership and showing that that the business community is ready to lead the UK economy to net zero. The Government must respond by showing equivalent leadership in the coming months through strengthening the UK’s net zero strategy.”