The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, and his Canadian counterpart, Steven MacKinnon, signed this Thursday in Madrid a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) under which both governments commit to connecting the ports of Spain and Canada through a green maritime corridor across the Atlantic. The agreement, sealed during a bilateral meeting, defines the context and scope of the future corridor, its structure, and the steps that both countries must take to implement it.
The memorandum establishes that the Atlantic route will prioritize the use of decarbonized fuels and propulsion systems that do not add greenhouse gases to the global system throughout their entire life cycle, from production to consumption. The approach encompasses the operation of ships, the source of fuel, and the associated logistics chain, without being limited to the emissions produced by a ship during its voyage.
During the meeting, Puente expressed Spain's commitment to the decarbonization of transport, which in his presentation involves the development of integrated public policies impacting infrastructure, public transport, urban planning, digitalization, clean energies, and citizen movement patterns. The minister emphasized the mutual interest of Spain and Canada in establishing a decarbonized corridor across the Atlantic that connects Canadian ports with Europe, particularly with Spain.
The so-called green maritime corridors are trade routes between two or more ports in which the involved parties—shipping companies, port authorities, fuel suppliers, and administrations—agree to operate with low or zero-emission technologies and fuels. The concept took international shape from the Clydebank Declaration, adopted during COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, in which a group of countries committed to establishing at least six corridors of this type before 2025. Since then, various governments and organizations have designed pilot routes that serve as testbeds for technologies still in the deployment phase.
