European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E) has published a paper which sets out the shipping pollution profile of selected developed countries and demonstrates policy actions they can take to address these emissions.
According to the report, there is an ample opportunity and need for the countries to take action now on their shipping emissions. This should start through putting in place an emissions monitoring and reporting law that could be modelled on the EU’s and on top of which other policy measures can be implemented.
Furthermore, the figures show that containerships make up the highest proportion of emissions per ship type in most of the countries analysed (China, EEA, the USA, the UK and New Zealand). In Japan, Australia and Canada, bulk carriers make up the lion’s share of pollution per ship type, with this amount being particularly high in Australia, at 58% or 16.4 MtCO2 .
Tanker pollution makes up the highest share per ship type in South Korea at 5.4 MtCO2. Emissions from LNG tankers are between 16% and 18% in Australia, Japan and South Korea, which is notably higher as a share of total emissions than in the other states analysed (the next highest amount is 9% in the USA).\
Revenue and carbon markets
According to the report, potential revenue, for example through pricing pollution in carbon markets, will be important to address the impacts of pollution whether they be on health or the environment locally or globally.
These revenues can also be used in part to support shipping decarbonisation, as has been shown by the EU’s Innovation Fund and Norway’s Enova. In the US alone, €1.4 billion euros is currently awarded as an indirect subsidy to the shipping industry each year. In China, this amount is €0.95 billion euros and these amounts will go up as each country’s carbon price increases.
