News / Yang Ming top carrier for carbon efficiency – but not everyone agrees

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Yang Ming is the most carbon-efficient carrier on the Asia-Europe tradelane, according to research by Xeneta – but independent researcher Searoutes.com ranks the Taiwanese carrier second, after HMM.

What began as Xeneta’s ‘heroes and villains’ project – hastily rebranded to ‘naming and faming’ – uses Xeneta’s carbon efficiency index (CEI), a CO₂ equivalent per tonne-mile measure which differs dramatically from IMO’s chosen CII measure. This yielded surprising results on the Far East to South America East Coast route in February.

Now, Yang Ming has been ‘named and famed’ as the best-performing carrier in carbon intensity, with a CEI score of 76.5. CMA CGM, which has leaned hard on LNG as carbon-reduction strategy, had a score of 83.2, while Hapag Lloyd, in tenth place, scored 119.3.

Xeneta noted that all carriers were displaying higher-than-average levels of CO₂, thanks to their inability to fill their vessels. Unlike the IMO’s CII score, CEI incentivises carriers to run as full as possible, since this is the most carbon-efficient way of transporting cargo.

The CEI methodology is based on data from Marine Benchmark and calculated based on AIS data, including speed, combined with modelled factors, such as weather data, and load factor.

Xeneta notes that Yang Ming saw a smaller drop in volumes than its competitors, outperforming the average by 10.8%, as well as increasing the average size of vessels deployed on the Asia-Europe trades.

But Searoutes told The Loadstar the ‘tradelane’ methodology was “not necessarily optimal” for making sweeping determinations on CO₂.

“In short, we have Yang Ming as number two, not one,” explained Searoutes vp of sales Jocelyn Hansen. “Looking at CO₂ on a tradelane level does not provide enough intelligence to utilise the data for performance, as the difference of CO₂ at a port pair level is so significantly different.”

In fact, Searoutes’ research from Q4 22 saw Yang Ming in second place, after HMM, with Maersk third. Dr Pierre Garreau, Searoutes CEO, told The Loadstar: “Zooming in the two port pairs for instance show different top threes.”

Between Dachan Bay and Rotterdam, Searoutes finds MSC in first place, followed by HMM and Cosco; meanwhile, between Kaohsiung and Oslo, Searoutes finds ONE, Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk the podium finishers.

“Tradelane aggregates are… not representative of the truth,” said Dr Garreau.