Tag: CO2

 Maersk Line announced that both Philips and Maersk Line commit to cut 20% for every Philips container moved confirming their mutual values and ambitions for achieving sustainable growth in a 5-year Carbon Pact.Focus on progress and innovation Philips understands that sustainable development is one of the most challenging issues facing the world. Therefore, Philips is engaging suppliers to create awareness of sustainability topics and encourage them to increase environmental performance. “Philips believes the transition from a linear to a circular economy is an essential boundary condition to create a sustainable world. It is a driver of innovation in the areas of materials, components, product re-use, and not unimportantly logistics. Therefore, continued focus on reducing our environmental impact from logistics is required.” says Arjan de Jongste, Senior Vice President Procurement Indirect Materials & Services at Royal Philips.With this in mind, and Philips’ mission to create a more sustainable world through innovation, the two parties have signed a five-year strategic Carbon Pact. The agreement integrates both companies’ longstanding commitments to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions within their value chain by 2020. The CO2 reductions are to be achieved over a 5-year time frame between 2016 and 2020 and will focus closely on reducing emissions ...

  During an expert discussion in the European Parliament NABU criticised the fact that there is virtually no surveillance scheme in place to control if ships meet the required bunker quality standards when sailing the North and Baltic Sea or the English Channel. The European Sulphur Directive (2012/33/EU) however limits the sulphur content for ship fuels as of January 1st 2015 to a maximum of 0.1% for ships operating in European waters declared as SECA in order to limit the sector's massive contribution to air pollution levels. Although there is only limited data available at the moment NABU stated that the number of ships being non-compliant are expected to be well over acceptable levels. The experts explained this view by demonstrating the economic advantage for cheaters in combination with a serious lack of enforcement when it comes to surveillance and penalties. NABU CEO Leif Miller said:"We definitely face a systematic malfunction if those market participants are the losers who run ships on cleaner fuels and according to the rules. At the moment there is a huge incentive for ship owners to be non-compliant as cheaters safe ten thousands of Euros per passage through the European SECA if they use the dirty fuel ...

 The reinsertion of international aviation and shipping emissions into the draft Paris agreement has been welcomed by sustainable transport group Transport & Environment after it was dropped from text issued by the talks’ co-chairs on 5 October.However, the draft’s language needs to be considerably strengthened if it is to help curb the two sectors’ growing climate impact, T&E said.The shipping and aviation sectors were initially exempted from targeted CO2 emissions cuts in the December Paris climate agreementBill Hemmings, clean shipping and aviation manager at T&E, said:“International aviation and shipping emissions are the elephants in the room for the UNFCCC. The Paris Agreement must send a clear signal – not a passing reference – to the UN bodies regulating these emissions, ICAO and IMO, that time is up and action is now due. The 2 degree global warming limit becomes next to impossible if Paris gives these sectors a free pass.”Bill Hemmings concluded: “The latest text is the result of developed and developing countries cooperating on this issue for the first time. There is real hope now that Paris will close these gaping loopholes.”Source: Transport & EnvironmentIn the start, I was straightforward with you propecia before and after has changed my ...

 ICS comments on   International Transport Forum's proposals  (ITF, a think tank affiliated to the OECD)  which suggest a carbon charge for shipping and says that shipping should not be treated like an OECD economy.ICS questions why international shipping should accept a carbon price of $US25 per tonne of CO2, as proposed by the International Transport Forum (ITF). This would be almost three times higher than the carbon price paid by shore based industries in developed nations.  About 70% of the world merchant fleet is registered in UNFCCC ‘non-Annex I’ developing countries, and maritime trade is of vital benefit to rich and emerging economies alike.  ICS emphasises that shipping is committed to reducing CO2 and has a responsibility to contribute to the achievement of the United Nations ‘2 degree’ climate change goal.  But the UNFCCC recognises that developed and developing nations should accept differing commitments, and shipping is no different, especially in view of its vital role in the movement of about 90% of global trade. While China and India, for example, have already made positive CO2 reduction commitments to COP 21, these will not deliver absolute CO2 reductions for several years.  Some richer nations, however, consistent with the UNFCCC CBDR principle, have made more ambitious commitments. Shipping ...

 According to the latest draft deal, the aviation and shipping sectors are set to be exempt from targeted CO2 emissions cuts in the December Paris climate agreement, T&E reports This is an irresponsible U-turn, say environmental groups Seas At Risk and Transport & Environment. CO2 emissions from the two sectors are set to grow by up to 250% by 2050, making attempts to limit global warming to 2°C all but impossible. The latest draft Paris deal removes previous calls for aviation and shipping CO2 reduction targets. Both international sectors are not covered by national targets in the Paris agreement. Aviation is responsible for 5% of global warming with shipping emitting 3% of global CO2. Even so, last week outgoing IMO secretary-general, Koji Sekimizu, argued publicly against an overall cap on ship emissions, saying it would inhibit world trade.John Maggs, senior policy advisor at Seas At Risk, said: “Excluding shipping from Paris opens up a fatal flaw in the global strategy to tackle climate change. As the IMO secretary-general’s recent remarks show, without a clear signal from the UNFCCC, the IMO is incapable of making the necessary decisions to ensure shipping takes a fair share of the burden of reducing emissions.”Proposals from the least ...

 The Global Maritime Energy Efficiency Partnerships Project (GloMEEP), which aims to support increased uptake and implementation of energy-efficiency measures for shipping, was formally launched on Monday 28 September in Singapore, at the IMO-Singapore Future-Ready Shipping 2015 conference.  This Global Environment Facility (GEF)/United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/IMO project, formally designated “Transforming the Global Maritime Transport Industry towards a Low Carbon Future through Improved Energy Efficiency”, will focus in particular on building capacity to implement technical and operational measures in developing countries, where shipping is increasingly concentrated.Funding for the two-year project was agreed in July. IMO will execute the project, which marks the beginning of a new blueprint for creating global, regional and national partnerships to build the capacity to address maritime energy efficiency and for countries to mainstream this issue within their own development policies, programmes and dialogues.Attending the GloMEEP launch were representatives of the lead pilot countries for the project: Argentina, China, Georgia, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Morocco, Panama, Philippines and South Africa. The lead pilot countries will be supported in taking a fast-track approach to pursuing relevant legal, policy and institutional reforms, driving national and regional government action and industry innovation to support the effective implementation of IMO’s energy efficiency requirements.  The ...

 DNV GL has issued article to provide an overview of how MRV will affect the maritime industry and what shipping companies need to do to achieve compliance. The regulation in a nutshellThe European Commission (EC) is bringing emissions from shipping into its 2009 climate and energy package. MRV is designed to progressively integrate maritime emissions into the EU’s policy for reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions (EU regulation 2015/757). MRV requires ship owners and operators to annually monitor, report and verify CO2 emissions for vessels equal to or larger than 5,000 GT and which call at any EU port. The results will be published on a regular basis. Entered into force on 1 July 2015, the regulation will become fully effective on 1 January 2018.Shipping companies will need to prepare a monitoring plan by 31 August 2017 at the latest for each of their ships that falls under the jurisdiction of the regulation. They will have to monitor and report the verified amount of CO2 emitted by their vessels on voyages to, from and between EU ports and will also be required to provide information on energy efficiency parameters (see below). Data collection will start on a per-voyage basis from 1 January ...

 Increased greenhouse gas emissions from the release of carbon dioxide and methane contained in the Arctic permafrost could result in $43 trillion in additional economic damage by the end of the next century, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Colorado.In a letter published today (21 September) in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers have for the first time modelled the economic impact caused by melting permafrost in the Arctic to the end of the twenty-second century, on top of the damage already predicted by climate and economic models.The Arctic is warming at a rate which is twice the global average, due to anthropogenic, or human-caused, greenhouse gas emissions. If emissions continue to rise at their current rates, Arctic warming will lead to the widespread thawing of permafrost and the release of hundreds of billions of tonnes of methane and CO2 - about 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon are held in permafrost soils in the form of frozen organic matter.Rising emissions will result in both economic and non-economic impacts, as well as a higher chance of catastrophic events, such as the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, increased flooding and extreme weather. ...

 In advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December, the global shipping industry, as represented by the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), has launched some key messages to government negotiators, explaining the impressive progress the industry is making to reduce its carbon footprint. A new ICS fact sheet ‘Delivering CO2 Emission Reductions: Shipping is Part of the Solution’ can be downloaded at by clicking here.According to ICS, the global industry is already delivering carbon neutral growth having reduced total CO2 emissions by more than 10% since 2007, despite an increase in maritime trade. CO2 emissions from international shipping now represent just 2.2% of the world’s total CO2 emissions compared to 2.8% in 2007 (UN IMO Green House Gas Study, 2014).“These are genuine reductions through fuel efficiency, without the need for complex virtual measures such as carbon offsets,” said ICS Secretary General, Peter Hinchliffe.“With bigger ships, better engines and smarter speed management, the industry is confident of a 50% CO2 reduction by 2050 when the entire world fleet will comprise super fuel-efficient ships, many using clean fuels such as LNG.”But in the run-up to the Paris Conference, the shipping industry recognises that governments expect more. Shipping’s global regulator, the UN International Maritime ...

 The University College of London (UCL) Energy Institute was commissioned by the Royal Belgian Shipowners Association (RBSA) to provide further insights into CO2 emissions, specifically the Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator (EEOI) and recent policy events, such as the EU MRV policy, through examining individual ship’s as well as fleets’ data over a 5 to 6 years timespan.The work carried out provided the association with an evidence-based opinion on the merits of different operational energy efficiency indices and preparing members for foreseeable future changes in the industry. The work also discusses the challenges for policymakers in implementing MRV given the uncertainty in the data and measures to sanitize the data for analysis.The Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator (EEOI) was developed by the IMO in order to allow ships to monitor the carbon emissions of their shipping activities. The EEOI is the total carbon emissions in a given time period per unit of revenue tonne-miles. Variations in the index are mainly caused by three factors: the technical efficiency of the ship, the amount of cargo transported per unit of time, and variations in speed. However, as the EEOI is an aggregate number, it is difficult to identify the influence of these factors.The study ...