PortXchange’s EmissionInsider selected for Blue Economy Incubator pilot
The Port of San Diego has selected PortXchange’s EmissionInsider to support its latest Blue Economy Incubator (BEI) pilot project, taking a step that raises an uncomfortable question for the wider maritime industry.
If ports cannot accurately measure the majority of emissions generated across their operations, how can they genuinely claim to be reducing them? The Port believes that question is worth answering.
The Port of San Diego Board of Port Commissioners has approved an agreement with PortXchange for EmissionInsider to become the 14th project supported through its Blue Economy Incubator. Established in 2016, the programme supports sustainable, ocean-based technologies that contribute to a more resilient and innovative blue economy across the San Diego region.
For years, decarbonization has become one of the maritime industry’s defining ambitions.
Yet while environmental commitments have grown stronger, many ports are still making critical decisions using incomplete emissions information, particularly when it comes to ships and other activities beyond their direct control. Ambitious targets alone do not reduce emissions. Better operational understanding does.
That is why EmissionInsider was developed.
The platform enables ports to collect, integrate, analyse and report emissions data across their operations, providing greater visibility of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and helping organisations understand where emissions are occurring, where operational bottlenecks exist and where improvements can have the greatest impact. The platform will support the Port of San Diego’s Maritime Clean Air Strategy (MCAS), providing emissions intelligence to inform future planning, reporting and environmental decision-making.
Sjoerd de Jager, PortXchange Co-Founder and Managing Director, said: “We are truly proud to partner with the Port of San Diego, a port that has long set the standard for environmental leadership in the United States.
“Decarbonization is the defining challenge of our time, and moments like these remind us why we do what we do. With EmissionInsider, we’re helping ports better understand emissions from ships and other outside operations they don’t directly control, so they can take informed action to reduce air pollution and advance decarbonization. This is exactly the kind of partnership that moves the maritime industry forward.”
The Blue Economy Incubator has supported sustainable technology companies since 2016, helping bring practical innovations into real-world port operations while encouraging collaboration between industry, technology developers and public agencies.
For PortXchange, the agreement represents more than another technology deployment. It reflects a growing recognition that environmental leadership is no longer defined by the ambition of a strategy alone, but by the quality of the operational decisions that follow.
As regulatory expectations increase and pressure grows to demonstrate measurable environmental progress, ports will need more than sustainability commitments. They will need confidence in the data on which those commitments are built.
The Port of San Diego has chosen to begin with visibility. The wider maritime industry now faces the same question.
