MSC CEO Soren Toft highlighted the importance of working together to achieve net decarbonisation.
During a keynote digital speech at DNV’s ‘Fuel of the Future Conference’ on 11 January, Mr. Toft noted that as shipping volumes have grown over the years, so have the environmental emissions produced as a by-product of delivering goods around the world.
Nowadays, the rate at which emissions are rising has started to decline, but there is much still to do to make tackling climate change a global imperative
For this reason, he explained that container lines such as MSC must continue to do their part to help mitigate the impact of climate change while continuing to operate responsibly in meeting the ever-increasing demand for global trad. As he mentioned, “it is critical that our priority this year is not only to respond to the huge demand we are experiencing in the very complex, congested markets that emerged amid COVID, but also to ensure that we do not decouple this from our efforts to decarbonise.”
To achieve these goals, collaboration, with MSC having already adopted industry-wide, as well as cross-sector collaboration in order to “enable the massive investment needed to decarbonise shipping.”
Mr. Soren also emphasised that:
By cooperating and collaborating with others, we will capitalise and build on the interdependencies between ocean-going and inland logistics as well as other sectors providing fuels, distribution systems and infrastructure
While MSC has not settled on a precise mix of alternative fuels it will adopt in future, it says that low-carbon fuels will come at a premium and this will have to be passed on throughout the supply chain.
However, governments must play a vital role in catalysing the process and rapidly provide a more robust global framework to incentivise the transition.
