UK Chamber of Shipping: IMO must take greater action to eliminate emissions by 2050

Speaking at the UK Chamber of Shipping Annual Dinner last week, Chamber President John Denholm CBE called on the IMO to take more decisive action to cut emissions from the international shipping industry.

Delivering his address, John Denholm said:

I acknowledge the progress that IMO have made in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from the industry through technical measures but the game has changed. It is no longer about mitigating emissions it is about eliminating them and eliminating them by 2050

As he explained, “a market based measure is not about raising revenue it is about driving change and if the system adopted takes money out of the equation it is simply going to mean that the cost of the change is going to be greater.

For this reason, he urged the industry and member states to put aside self interest and help the IMO find a solution that they can implement that will drive the change to net zero.

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John Denholm also urged the UK Shipping Minister Robert Courts not to be tempted to adopt regional measures to help cut emissions.

Please don’t be tempted! It is not simple a plethora of regional market based measures would put a terrible burden on our industry, depress trade and would inevitably be inequitable

Instead he asked to campaign against nations setting up regional or national market based measures.

The EU Parliament’s Rapporteur published his draft report on a proposal to revise the Emissions Trading System (ETS) Directive, the World Shipping Council (WSC) raises concerns.

More specifically, WSC has two primary concerns:

The proposed changed definition of “responsible entity” would corrupt the ETS: The proposed amendments are intended to shield shipowners from ETS costs and then provide them with front-of-line access to ETS revenues such as the Ocean Fund. This would corrupt the whole idea of the ETS, changing it from a “polluter-pays” policy to a system where the “polluter-gets-paid”, and vastly reduce its effectiveness. A market incentive for technological change that cannot be applied to shipowners who control the pace of shipboard technology innovation will fail to achieve EU Green Deal goals, slowing down the pace of transition.
The bilateral agreements proposed would undermine progress towards global GHG policy: Other amendments direct the European Commission to abandon its principle of multilateralism and engage in bilateral deals with nations to extend carbon pricing only for routes serving Europe. This would be a costly distraction, undermining progress towards global GHG policy at the IMO and slowing progress toward decarbonising shipping. It would also undermine the GHG and economic goals of the EU Green Deal, amplifying the risks identified in EU impact assessments – GHG leakage, loss of EU port competitiveness, and distortion of trade.