Exploring Digital Twin and GHG Accounting in European Ports: An Empirical Perspective

This study examines the relationship between digital twins and greenhouse gas accounting (GHG) in the port industry. In the last two decades, ports have become increasingly aware of new technologies capable of mitigating climate change. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain technology, and related innovations are vital resources. Their effective integration into logistics management can significantly influence a port's success in addressing environmental challenges. Also, many ports in Europe are striving to achieve comprehensive insights into both historical data and real-time updates by implementing digital twin technology. This initiative is mainly focused on decarbonizing port operations at the shipport interface. The linkages between technological and digital factors in evaluating the carbon footprint of ports is not yet well-defined. There remains a scarcity of comprehensive case studies explored within the literature. Scholarly literature often struggles to align with realworld developments, especially for defining the organizational, managerial, and measurement changes needed for environmental sustainability within the port sector's theoretical foundations. Therefore, to fill the knowledge gap a multiple case study approach is used to investigate these issues on the major European ports. Information is gathered by non-financial reports and face-to-face interviews with port authority managers included in the sample. Data collected will undergo coding and analysis by NVivo software. The discussion of results will encompass both theoretical and managerial implications.