Each year, the IEA’s Tracking Clean Energy Progress (TCEP) report examines developments across a range of clean energy sectors and technologies. The report evaluates whether a technology or sector is on track, needs further improvement, or is not on track to meet these targets. For the shipping industry, IEA estimates that ‘’implementing IMO’s final GHG strategy only by 2023 will have very little impact on the possibility of meeting 2025 2°C targets (2DS)’’.
The report uses benchmarks for 2025 as modelled in IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives 2017, as well as the milestones identified in the IEA Technology Roadmaps. Measuring against these benchmarks provides an assessment of whether technologies, energy savings and emissions reduction measures are on track to achieve the longer-term emissions objectives by 2060.
For the international shipping, IEA says that meeting the 2DS requires the global shipping fleet to improve its fuel efficiency per vehicle-km at an annual rate of 2.3% between 2015 and 2025. Yet, the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), applying to new ships only results in a fleet average improvement of 1% to 2025.
The IMO has made progress in agreeing on regulations on reducing sulphur oxide (SOx) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from ships. Yet its GHG policy is still under consideration: an initial GHG strategy is expected by 2018, which will be a stepping stone to the final strategy expected by 2023. However, IMO’s strategy will eventually have little impact on meeting the anticipated targets.
Therefore, IEA recommends the following:
- Strengthen enforcement mechanisms for emissions from ships and the EEDI, including inspections, sanctions and legal frameworks, to ensure compliance with IMO measures.
- Stimulate the engagement of ports in encouraging GHG reductions in ships, e.g. with bonus/malus schemes supporting clean ships from fees applied to ships with poorer environmental performances.
- Introduce carbon taxes on shipping fuels based on their life cycle GHG emissions.
The 2°C Scenario (2DS) lays out an energy system pathway and a CO2 emissions trajectory consistent with at least a 50% chance of limiting the average global temperature increase to 2°C by 2100. Annual energy-related CO2 emissions are reduced by 70% from today’s levels by 2060, with cumulative emissions of around 1 170 Gt CO2 between 2015 and 2100 (including industrial process emissions). To stay within this range, CO2 emissions from fuel combustion and industrial processes must continue their decline after 2060, and carbon neutrality in the energy system must be reached before 2100. The 2DS continues to be the ETP central climate mitigation scenario, recognising that it represents a highly ambitious and challenging transformation of the global energy sector that relies on a substantially strengthened response compared to today’s efforts.
Explore more by reading IEA’s report “Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2017”:
