PortXchange

Across Europe and North America, many medium-sized ports are required to report their emissions annually, but are often shorthanded. Their small sustainability teams manage environmental planning alongside finance or strategic responsibilities, while navigating complex monitoring regulations. Much of their time goes into gathering and cleaning fragmented emissions data from visiting vessels, leaving limited capacity to focus on reducing emissions.

This practical constraint is what PortXchange solves, rethinking how ports collect, validate and use emissions data to move from reporting to reduction.

“Ports rely on manual processes, with 75 percent of effort spent on data collection and validation. When effort is concentrated on preparation rather than insight, progress slows,” says Sjoerd de Jager, co-founder and managing director.

Measuring Emissions from Port Operations

PortXchange did not begin with emissions, but with efficiency. Its first product, Synchroniser, was a port call optimisation platform built to improve coordination between shipping lines, terminals and port authorities. By tracking vessel movements across major ports, PortXchange uncovered a systemic inefficiency. Ships frequently steam at full speed towards ports only to wait at anchorage. This “hurry up and wait” pattern creates congestion, raises risks and burns unnecessary fuel.

Seeing this pattern across multiple ports, PortXchange recognised that poor coordination was not just an operational problem but a source of avoidable emissions. EmissionInsider emerged from that insight, giving ports clear visibility into emissions without adding to the manual preparation.

At its core, EmissionInsider automates workflows by combining three core data layers. PortXchange digitally maps each port, capturing berths, fairways, anchorages and turning basins. It then overlays vessel movement data using automatic identification system data and a verified vessel database from Lloyd’s Register. These inputs are processed through a proprietary calculation model developed with The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research and aligned with the GHG Protocol and international reporting frameworks.

Each calculation accounts for more than 40 real-world variables, including weather and currents, engine type and vessel age. Calibration tests against vessel sensors show minimal deviation between measured and calculated emissions, producing audit-ready data that ports can trust. The objective is not decimal-level precision, but consistent measurement that tracks progress and compares year-on-year performance.

Trust is built through validation. From the outset, PortXchange works with ports during onboarding to confirm geofences, standardise naming conventions and review anomalies together. Emission results are compared with those from previous reporting cycles to ensure consistency and accelerate adoption.

The result becomes tangible once that trust is established. Reporting that once took months is completed in days. Smaller ports receive regulation-ready reports, while larger ports integrate emissions data directly via application programming interfaces (API). Teams still validate results internally, but are freed from manual data work to focus on decarbonisation strategy

From Data to Decarbonisation

Beyond reporting, EmissionInsider reveals ports where emissions concentrate and identifies the processes that drive them. Combined with Synchroniser, it enables just-in-time arrivals that reduce anchorage time, ease congestion, improve safety, and lower emissions through better connections rather than new infrastructure.

As ports mature, the focus shifts from compliance to decision-making. Advanced ports use PortXchange’s data to evaluate interventions, calculate ROIs and plan decarbonisation. It acts as a strategic advisor to the Port of Rotterdam, where emissions intelligence feeds directly into internal systems via APIs, supporting internal reporting and capital decisions. Belfast Harbour uses consistent data to remove uncertainty from annual compliance, enabling proactive, long-term decarbonisation initiatives.

PortXchange sees collaboration as the next phase of port decarbonisation. It secures data sharing across the port ecosystem and helps overcome the fragmentation that slows progress. Its pragmatic approach balances transparency and cybersecurity, which turns data into a shared asset. In doing so, PortXchange equips ports to move beyond reporting towards measurable reductions, facilitating cleaner air for nearby communities and more resilient, sustainable port operations.