Recently, the Shanghai Municipal People's Government issued the "15th Five-Year Plan for Accelerating the Construction of Shanghai International Shipping Center," which outlines tasks focusing on hub infrastructure, shipping services, smart transformation, and green development, further enhancing Shanghai's ability to allocate global shipping resources.
According to the plan, by 2030, Shanghai will have basically established an international shipping center with globally leading hub portal capabilities, high-quality and convenient modern shipping services, outstanding smart and low-carbon innovation capabilities, and a secure and resilient governance system. The annual container throughput of Shanghai Port is expected to exceed 58 million TEUs, the combined annual passenger throughput of the two airports is targeted at 150 million, and the annual cargo and mail throughput is projected to reach approximately 4.7 million mt.
Green and low-carbon transformation becomes a key focus of this plan. Shanghai will explore green development pathways for international shipping, support the pilot application of ships powered by green energy and fuels such as hydrogen, ammonia, electricity, and dimethyl ether, simultaneously enhance the storage and bunkering capacity for marine LNG, methanol, and biofuels, and coordinate the arrangement of ship fuel bunkering and maritime service anchorages.
For inland waterway shipping, Shanghai will promote new energy and clean energy vessels such as battery-powered and methanol-powered ships, and construct supporting facilities for fuel bunkering, charging, and battery swapping. Meanwhile, Shanghai will steadily advance the construction of green shipping corridors, strengthen port power supply assurance, and focus on increasing the shore power utilization rate for container vessels and home-port cruise ships during their port calls.
The clean energy transition for ground equipment at ports and airports will be accelerated. The plan proposes promoting the use of new energy and clean energy products for newly added or upgraded non-road mobile machinery at ports and airports, thereby reducing traditional energy consumption and pollutant emissions during ground operations.
In the aviation sector, Shanghai will further increase the proportion of renewable energy usage at airports, build and improve the bunkering capacity for sustainable aviation fuel, promote coordinated emission reduction in air transport and airport operations, and provide green energy support for building a leading aviation hub in the Asia-Pacific region.
In addition to promoting the energy structure transition, Shanghai will also advance the construction of automated terminals, smart ports, and smart airports, enhance the connectivity of shipping data, and strengthen the service capabilities in shipping insurance, maritime law, transaction settlement, ship management, and professional talent.
Through hub capacity expansion, route optimization, high-end service clustering, digital and intelligent technology application, and clean energy substitution, Shanghai will drive the transformation of its international shipping center from a scale advantage to advantages in functions, services, and green competitiveness.
