New targets are to roll back emissions of freight ships that burn through millions of tonnes of dirty bunker fuel.
At its marine environment protection committee meeting last week, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed to new shipping emissions targets to keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C (2.8°F) by mid-century, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement. The proposal was panned by climate activists who said the targets didn’t go far enough.
The United Nations-backed agency, and de facto regulator of global shipping, first adopted measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2011. But last week’s pledge – which reinforced previous targets – was designed to achieve net-zero emissions “by or around” 2050.
Until now, the shipping industry lacked a commitment to net zero, which will be achieved when no new additional greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere.
The IMO’s decision follows on the heels of last month’s global finance summit. Convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, its meetings focused on loss and damage funding for developing countries through, among other things, levies on global shipping.
While attempts to raise climate financing through carbon taxes were dismissed for now, the IMO’s climate strategy did agree to “indicative checkpoints”, which aim to reduce the carbon intensity of shipping fuels by 20 percent in 2030, as compared to 2008 levels.
Intensity refers to the emissions produced per cargo relative to distance. The document also refers to “striving” for targets of a 30 percent reduction by 2030 and an 80 percent cut by 2040, adding that near-zero fuels should make up 5 percent of shipping’s energy mix by the end of the decade.
Conservationists have criticised the plan as toothless and vague. In a public statement, Mark Lutes of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said “the shipping industry regulator has left the sector with targets and measures off course for emissions reductions at the scale and pace needed”.
Several Pacific Island IMO-member states have also pointed out that, to be consistent with net zero by 2050, a 36 percent emissions cut should have been agreed by 2030 (with a 96 percent reduction by 2040).
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Big emitter
Shipping accounts for 80-90 percent of global merchandise trade, by volume. To move these goods, freight ships burn roughly 300 million metric tonnes of dirty bunker fuel each year, producing one billion tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to 3 percent of global greenhouse emissions.
The shipping industry will have to halve emissions by 2050 to stay within the limits of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C (2.8°F) global heating (compared to pre-industrial levels) target.
In recent years, the trend has been in the opposite direction – between 2013 and 2018, shipping emissions rose by 10 percent, according to the latest data available.