RE: Big news - Shipping will fine if not using clean energy12 Apr 2025 10:11
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Shipping has become the first global industry to agree financial penalties for greenhouse gas emissions.
A meeting of the UN’s International Maritime Organization in London on Friday ended with countries agreeing on emissions targets for the industry.
The “historic” agreement involving 108 parties was the culmination of ten years of negotiations. It addressed a gap left by the Paris agreement in 2015, which did not set out a process for reducing the 3 per cent of climate-warming gases that come from shipping.
The deal was nearly derailed when the United States pulled out of the talks, saying that it would retaliate against penalties on its own ships by imposing penalties on other countries.
Coming into force in 2028, and covering 97 per cent of the world’s merchant shipping fleet, the UN agreement will force vessels to use increasingly cleaner fuels, or pay a penalty of up to £290 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions. Companies that reduce their emissions more quickly will be able to sell credits to those failing to keep pace with the targets.
Small island states vulnerable to sea-level rise joined environmental groups in arguing that the deal was insufficient. They argued that it would have been better to stick with an earlier proposal for a levy on all greenhouse gas emissions. Under the agreement, vessels that reduce their emissions by 43 per cent by 2035 will not attract any penalty for their pollution.
Jesse Fahnestock, director of decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, said the agreement was unlikely to put the shipping industry on track for its target of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
He argued that the emissions targets were not steep enough to drive investment in next-generation clean fuels such as e-kerosene and ammonia that could cut vessels’ carbon footprint by 90 per cent, but which the World Economic Forum estimates are 3-4 times as expensive as fossil fuels.
Fahnestock said companies would probably opt for biofuels instead, which are about 75 per cent less polluting than fossil fuels, but which could drive deforestation via the expansion of palm oil farming. “You don’t want to get into a situation where ten years from now everyone’s using biofuels but there are no alternatives on the table,” he said.
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