The conference brought together leaders from the Barcelona Port Community and environmental representatives from the Generalitat, the City Council, and the Airport to address European regulatory requirements.
November 13, 2026
The Head of Environment of the Port de Barcelona, Jordi Vila; and the Director of Institutional Relations of the Port de Barcelona and Director of the Governing Council of the Barcelona Port Community, Ingrid Boqué, during the presentation of the conference.
The Port de Barcelona is making firm progress in its objective to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to 2017 levels and achieve emission neutrality by 2050. This was one of the main topics of the Carbon Footprint Calculation conference, held today and organized by the Environment Working Group of the Barcelona Port Community. The event gathered key institutional, logistics, and industrial stakeholders from Catalonia to analyze the current regulatory framework, share measurement tools, and accelerate the decarbonization of the logistics and port sectors.
Calculating emissions is an essential step for companies within the Port Community to understand the carbon footprint generated by their activity and to design and implement environmental policies. In practice, this allows them to identify opportunities for operational efficiency, cost reduction, and transition to more sustainable business models. In a European and global context of increasingly demanding environmental regulations, reducing the carbon footprint has become a key tool for competitiveness.
In this regard, the Director of Institutional Relations of the Port de Barcelona and Director of the Governing Council of the Barcelona Port Community, Ingrid Boqué, emphasized that measuring and reducing emissions is no longer a voluntary commitment or merely a documentary one, but an indispensable "factor of survival and commercial competitiveness" for the global market. Boqué detailed the objectives of the Port de Barcelona's Energy Transition Plan, which is being deployed with an investment of 1.7 billion euros—780 million from public funds and 920 million from private capital—allocated to tangible projects such as the Nexigen Plan for quay electrification, Europe's largest rooftop photovoltaic park, and the promotion of green hydrogen.
The Carbon Footprint Calculation conference was structured into two blocks. The first, dedicated to the regulatory context and the plans of public administrations, featured the participation of representatives from Club EMAS Catalunya, the Catalan Office of Climate Change, and the Barcelona Energy Agency. They detailed the requirements of the European Fit for 55 strategy, the guidelines and technical support offered by the Generalitat de Catalunya to businesses, and the main lines of the Barcelona Climate Plan and its impact on the metropolitan area.
The second block focused on explaining how the city's two major transport infrastructures, the Port and the Airport, calculate their carbon footprint. Maurici Hervàs, Head of Energy Transition at the Port de Barcelona, and Esther Rodríguez, Head of the Environment Department at Barcelona-El Prat Airport, provided detailed information on how these measurements are carried out and what the decarbonization challenges are for their respective infrastructures.
The conference concluded with a round table, moderated by the Head of Environment of the Port de Barcelona, Jordi Vila, where representatives from companies operating in the Port explained how they calculate their carbon footprint. Participants agreed that this calculation not only allows compliance with legislation but also acts as a diagnostic tool to optimize operational costs and meet the demands of clients who increasingly prioritize green logistics routes.
With this meeting, the Barcelona Port Community consolidates its position as a coordinated ecosystem and a benchmark in climate resilience and innovation at a European scale.
