The European Parliament and the EU Member States still have not reached an agreement regarding the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). European shipping is therefore still in danger of being subject to one-side EU regulation, rather than supporting the global process, Danish Shipping suggests.
As reminded, the purpose of the emissions trading system is to reduce emissions in energy production and in industry, but shipping has so far not been part of that scheme, despite lengthy negotiations. No political agreement was reached for the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) for the period 2021-2030, Danish Shipping notes.
Bendt Bendtsen, Member of Parliament (The Danish Conservative Party), is opposed to this situation and claims that it has to stop now. He also calls on the European Parliament to abandon its special requirements to the detriment of European shipping companies and to support the work of IMO instead.
“Of course, it is disappointing that an agreement on a new CO2 emissions trading system has not been reached, because it is really necessary that the quota price rises. At the same time, the lack of consensus in the EU puts the shipping sector in a difficult situation. Especially now where the IMO has launched a global strategy for the sector’s emissions,” Bendt Bendtsen notes.
The IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) has launched an ambitious process to set a strategy for reducing shipping’s emissions on a global level. The next meeting round takes place this week. The plan is that an initial strategy should be in place in the spring 2018 and a final adoption in extended version in the spring 2023.
Danish Shipping would also like the EU system to use its efforts more constructively than pointing the gun at itself and its own industry, if the IMO does not deliver.
“The fact is that the input from the Danish and European shipping companies to the IMO negotiations are more ambitious than those of a number of IMO member states. The industry is not the barrier here, which is why we once again call on the EU to accelerate its climate diplomacy and reach out to the foot dragging countries instead of threatening to harm its own industry. Think at the global results we could have achieved last year, if we had chosen that way,” says Casper Andersen, Director of EU Affairs of Danish Shipping’s office in Brussels.
