The Global Maritime Forum (GMF) evaluates green shipping corridors, claiming that they are nearing their make-or-break moment.
As GMF explains in its National and Regional Policy for Green Shipping Corridors insight brief, green shipping corridors challenge traditional ways of doing business within the shipping sector and require innovative approaches to policymaking.
Key findings:
- Beyond the private sector’s own actions, national governments are the only stakeholders that have the means, and arguably the incentives, to enable this success and shape the future landscape of international shipping.
- In doing so, the single most important function for governments – and the one where no feasible alternatives currently exist – is to unlock private sector funding by de-risking the investments in scalable zero-emission technologies and narrowing the cost gap associated with early technology development.
- The corridors’ cross-border, cross-sectoral nature calls for countries to set aside the principle of technological neutrality, strengthen collaboration between governmental agencies and across the governments, and embrace a participative, proactive, and systems wide approach to designing and implementing policies.
- Through green corridors, international shipping has a unique opportunity to become a driving force behind the global energy transition, but the extent to which this opportunity becomes a reality hinges on robust but focused, timely, and transformative national policy action.
GMF also claims that countries must set aside the principle of technological neutrality, strengthen collaboration between governmental agencies, and embrace a participative, proactive, and systems-wide approach to designing and implementing policies.
The appropriate choice for any government will depend on which policy measures are already under development, GMF notes, especially given the large commitments governments are making in energy, particularly hydrogen.
Furthermore, smart combinations will aim to provide a best balance between incentivising fuel production and ensuring shipping-specific consumption on the corridor or corridors. The next few years will determine whether these corridors succeed in accelerating decarbonisation of the shipping sector and building the bridge to the post-2030 compliance regime, GMF concludes.
Generally, green corridors are a popular trend in the maritime industry. For instance, during the G20 summit in New Delhi on 9th September, it became known the United States and the European Union have supported the building of an economic corridor, connecting India to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, a few days ago, Yara Clean Ammonia ASA, the Methanol Institute, MPC Container Ships ASA, and the NUS Centre for Maritime Studies joined the Silk Alliance to decarbonize a regional shipping corridor centred on the container trades.
