ICS on CO2 Reduction Objectives
Members of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), including the UK Chamber, met last week in Istanbul, where they agreed to set new objectives in reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from shipping.
The ICS will submit a paper to the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) and its intercessional meeting (on July 3rd to 7th) that will propose three “aspirational” objectives that should be adopted by the IMO:
To maintain international shipping’s annual total CO2 emissions below 2008 levels;
To reduce CO2 emissions per tonne-km, as an average across international shipping, by at least 50% by 2050, compared to 2008; and
To reduce international shipping’s total annual CO2 emissions by an agreed percentage by 2050, compared to 2008, as a point on a continuing trajectory of CO2 emissions reduction.
The objectives aim to match the ambition of the Paris Agreement on climate change, while keeping CO2 reduction in the hands of the shipping industry itself with the IMO as its regulator.
The ICS will suggest that IMO should adopt these objectives as part of its initial CO2 reduction strategy to be agreed in 2018, following the adoption of an IMO Roadmap at the request of the industry in 2016. The IMO must develop a global solution or risk market-distorting measures imposed at national or regional level, the ICS says.
“It is very important that IMO sends a clear and unambiguous signal to the global community that shipping’s regulators have agreed some ambitious objectives, with numbers and dates, for reducing the sector’s CO2 emissions, in the same way that land-based activity is now covered by government commitments under the Paris Agreement,” ICS Chairman, Esben Poulsson, said at the Istanbul meeting.
The UK Chamber’s director of policy, David Balston, attended the meeting. “The UK Chamber was very pleased that there was agreement in terms of a paper to be submitted to the IMO MEPC,” he says. “This represents a major step forward by industry and it’s hoped that government can align itself and support the initiative.”
International shipping emitted 921 million tonnes of CO2 in 2008, according to the 2014 IMO GHG Study. As a result of technical and operational measures, this figure declined by 13% to less than 800 million tonnes of CO2 in 2012 or 2.2% of the world’s total CO2 emissions.
If additional CO2 reduction measures are not enforced, however, the IMO projects that total CO2 emissions from international shipping will increase to above 2008 levels again as demand for maritime transport grows.
