General cargo ship — emissions rankings

General cargo ships are the long tail of the merchant fleet: small, versatile, often decades old, hauling project cargo, steel and timber on irregular routes. Small hulls mean unfavourable physics — less cargo to spread the fuel over — and the type's average intensity sits well above the deep-sea giants'.

That is precisely why the type matters in the data: it shows the efficiency frontier of small-ship shipping, where a modern 8,000 dwt eco-design can halve the footprint of the 1990s veteran it replaces, and where future fuels like methanol are being trialled at manageable scale.

Verified data reported under the EU MRV regulation (source: EMSA / THETIS-MRV).

Most efficient: General cargo ship

Ranked by CO₂ emitted per tonne of cargo carried over one nautical mile — the metric that makes ships of different sizes comparable. Lower is better.

Biggest CO₂ emitters