With respect to the IMO’s recently adopted goal for 2050, which eyes a 70% efficiency improvement and a total 50% CO2 cuts by 2050, ICS Deputy Secretary General, Simon Bennett, noted that these targets can realistically only be achieved with the development and global roll out of genuine zero CO2 fuels.
Speaking at the annual Summit of Transport Ministers hosted by the OECD International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Mr. Bennett pointed out that the IMO targets are far more ambitious than the equivalent goals set in aviation industry, or the commitments made by governments under the Paris Agreement. However, IMO agreement is important because it gives the signal on the work that needs to be done to decarbonize the sector as soon as possible, he added.
To be clear, zero CO2 fuels means radical and as yet unproven technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells using ammonia or methanol or batteries powered using renewable energy. While LNG or biofuels will play an important part in the transition, we only really see these as interim solutions that won’t deliver the ambitious targets which IMO has now set for 2050. While we are confident new zero CO2 technologies will eventually deliver, they are not yet fully ready for maritime application, and certainly not yet for deep sea trades.
According to Mr Bennett, the development of these new technologies will require cooperation between all relevant stakeholders particularly shipbuilders, engine manufacturers and classification societies, but mostly by governments within a framework that needs to be developed by the IMO.
To kick start new technologies we also may need to make some compromises. For example, in order to develop hydrogen propulsion systems, and gain experience of the serious technical challenges, we may need to initially permit use of hydrogen that is still derived from fossil feedstock rather than renewables, a technology which is not quite there yet, though probably not insurmountable in the longer term.
With regard to short term measures, Mr Bennett said the industry recognises that there is a political need among many governments for new IMO regulations that will start achieving further CO2 reductions from the sector before 2023, so that the industry stays on track to improve efficiency, as an average across the sector, by at least 40% by 2030, as also agreed by IMO.
The next round of IMO discussions will take place in October 2018 in order to consider a list of possible candidate measures for CO2 reduction, and the industry is planning to make some detailed submissions to that meeting.
ICS is open to how shipowners can best optimize speed management and also use efficiency indicators to improve ship performance, possibly through strengthening the existing mandatory requirement for ships to use a Ship Efficiency Management Plan, perhaps linking this to some kind of mandatory external audit. However, we are very nervous about measures which will be far too complicated to administer and which may cause serious distortion to shipping markets, such as publishing supposed operational efficiency indicators for individual ships that have no relation to actual CO2 emissions in real life.
Mr Bennett concluded:
At the moment we believe the IMO strategy can best be delivered with technical measures alone. We don’t think we need the smoke and mirrors of market based measures or the purchase of carbon offsets to compensate for emissions which the sector is quite capable of reducing itself in line with the targets now agreed by IMO.
