Mr. Poul Woodall, Director Environment & Sustainability, DFDS, explains what the GREEN4SEA Clean Shipping Award means for his company. DFDS was the winner of the award this year for its focus on green shipping by investing in many initiatives. Mr. Woodall highlights that companies should never put on hold efforts for reducing their environmental impact. In addition, companies that are able to go beyond legal compliance, they should take initiatives and set the example to others for sustainable shipping.
GREEN4SEA: DFDS received the GREEN4SEA Clean Shipping Award for shedding its focus on green shipping by introducing more efficient ship operations, rewarding crews for reducing fuel consumption, sharing best practices among the ships’ crews and investing in scrubber installations. What does this milestone mean to your organization?
Poul Woodall: Acknowledgement is always nice to receive, but it must not become a sleeping pillow. Improving ones environmental footstep is an ongoing process and receiving the Green4Sea Clean Shipping Award hopefully can inspire the entire DFDS organisation to continue – even speed up – initiatives to further improve on this.
G4S: What role does sustainability play in your company? What do you do to reduce your environmental impact and contribute to more sustainable shipping?
P.W.: Our effort is a catalogue of a lot of small initiatives. The most important driver is management commitment. If a company has that, you are well placed to become leader of the industry in this important area.
G4S: When it comes to tackling the environmental challenges around the shipping sector, what are the core priorities on your agenda?
P.W.: Clearly CO2 or more specific greenhouse gases, which I consider the most urgent matter to be tackled. This is a global issue and needs to be tackled accordingly. On a more local level, reducing particles, not least NOx, is very important.
G4S: Do you have any new projects on the pipeline and/or plans that you would like to share with the rest of the industry?
P.W.: Yes and no, we have some interesting projects we are working on but it would be premature to make these initiatives available to a larger public.
G4S: What is your key message to the industry stakeholders with respect to green and sustainable shipping?
P.W.: As I mentioned in my acceptance speech: “Those who can – should”. By that, I am referring to companies who have the resources to go beyond legal compliance, should take responsibility and show leadership for the benefit and inspiration for the rest of the industry and indeed to the Global population at large. We must hand over the industry to the next generation in a better environmental shape than we received it.
Explore more about the 2017 GREEN4SEA Awards here
The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and not necessarily those of GREEN4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
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Poul Woodall, Director Environment & Sustainability, DFDS A/S
Poul Woodall has over 40 years of experience within the maritime and transport industry. The first 36 years were spent A.P.Moller-Maersk in various positions, mainly within the container and Ro/Ro segments. His career includes 17 years overseas experience with postings in Asia, The Middle East and Europe.
Since 2010, Poul has been with DFDS A/S in Copenhagen and in June 2013 he was appointed Director for Environment and Sustainability for the DFDS Group. Poul Woodall has a degree from Copenhagen Business School supplemented with management education at Insead and Stanford University. Poul is in the steering committees of the Trident Alliance and Green Ship of the Future and on the advisory board of IMPA-act and an affiliate Member of IEMA. Marine environment policy work is conducted through his affiliation with Interferry and various ESSF working groups in Brussels.
