iBarge announces that it will integrate BigMile for the inland shipping sector. The app will have a special CO2 module to give chartering offices and barge operators insight into emissions data for their own accounting. ‘CO2 reduction is really a supply chain issue. We would like to play a facilitating role in this as an ICT partner,’ says Marius Hakkesteegt, Business Developer at iBarge.
Inland navigation is digitizing at a rapid pace. All kinds of applications are becoming available that make it possible to share information and make it more transparent. With iBarge, shippers can report the status of the transport, receive, and deliver documents digitally, and share relevant information about availability or absence with their charterers. ‘The new CO2 module in iBarge uses BigMile to automatically add information on CO2 emissions to these data streams’, says Ilona Kuipers, Product Owner of iBarge.
‘BigMile is fed with data from iBarge. The calculations that BigMile returns via the so-called Emission API are forwarded to the back-office system of the charterers’, Kuipers explains. ‘This is used for reporting in the transport chain, so that the shippers will not be burdened with extra work. The data is not stored in iBarge or BigMile and is not made public.’
Bringing data streams together
Inland vessels are more energy efficient than trucks, given at the amount of cargo that can be transported at a time. However, the CO2 emissions for transport by inland navigation are much more difficult to measure than transport by trucks, because there is a wide variety of vessel types. ‘We help the inland shipping sector by bringing together multiple data streams in a single software solution and thus giving charterers the right tools to make emissions transparent and comparable’, says Marius Hakkesteegt.
Jan Pronk, Managing Director of BigMile: ‘Is is great to see that inland shipping is paying so much attention to the environment and reducing its footprint, while the share of inland shipping in the entire CO2 emissions of the transport sector in the Netherlands is already relatively speaking extremely low, at less than 5 percent. In the transport chain, however, it is becoming increasingly important to gain insight into CO2 emissions at vessel and voyage level. With iBarge we have found a great partner for CO2 monitoring in inland shipping to take this to the next level.’
