2886. Shipping Industry to Cut Emissions by Half of the 2008 Level by 2050

By Chris Mooney, The Washington Post, April 13, 2018

Member nations of the United Nations body charged with regulating shipping on the high seas adopted a first-ever strategy Friday to blunt the sector’s large contribution to climate change — bringing another major constituency on board in the international quest to cap the planet’s warming well below an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The strategy embraced by a committee of the International Maritime Organization would lower emissions from container ships, oil tankers, bulk carriers and other vessels by at least 50 percent by the year 2050 vs. where they stood in 2008. The group also said that emissions from shipping should reach a peak, and begin to decline, as soon as possible.

“IMO remains committed to reducing GHG emissions from international shipping and, as a matter of urgency, aims to phase them out as soon as possible in this century,” the group said.

But the United States “reserve[d]” its position on the strategy, with Coast Guard official Jeffrey Lantz, who headed the delegation to the London deliberations, saying that the country views “the establishment of an absolute reduction target as premature.”

The United States also objected to how responsibilities would be divided between developed and developing countries, and expressed “serious concern about how this document was developed and finalized.”

Shipping in recent years has been responsible for about 800 million tons annually of carbon dioxide emissions, according to Dan Rutherford, the marine and aviation program director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, who was in attendance for the deliberations in London this week. That means shipping’s emissions are 2.3 percent of the global total.

“If you counted it as a country, it would be the sixth-largest source of CO2 emissions,” said Rutherford, noting that 800 million tons of annual emissions is comparable to emissions from Germany.

And ships, by burning heavy fuel oil, create not only carbon dioxide emissions but also significant emissions of black carbon, or soot. Black carbon is a short-lived but powerful climate-change driver.

Moreover, if nothing is done to halt emissions growth in the industry, emissions are projected to continue to grow, and shipping would burn up a significant share of the remaining global carbon emissions allowable under the Paris climate agreement — releasing as much as 101 billion tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions between now and 2075, according to an analysis by Rutherford’s organization.

(International Council on Clean Transportation)

“The world’s shipping industry has now, for the first time, defined its commitment to tackle climate change, bringing it closer in-line with the Paris Agreement,” Tristan Smith, an expert on shipping and energy at the University College London energy institute, said in a statement.

Shipping and aviation are two major greenhouse-gas-producing sectors that have sat rather uncomfortably in the context of the global push to cut emissions under the Paris climate agreement.

Both sectors are very difficult to decarbonize, since they rely on energy-dense fuels to allow ships or planes to travel great distances without stopping.

Meanwhile, since the sectors have major international components, they are not the responsibility of any single country to regulate as part of a domestic climate-change strategy. Instead, addressing their role in climate change has fallen to United Nations bodies such as the IMO and the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Yet despite the ambition of the current strategy for shipping, Rutherford’s group’s analysis shows that it may not be strong enough. The group says that to be consistent with the Paris agreement, shipping should emit no more than 17 billion tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions from 2015 onward but that the current agreement implies emissions between 28 billion and 43 billion tons. (No action at all, meanwhile, could have meant 101 billion tons.)

Groups that were pushing for something stronger included small island nations, which have the most to lose if warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, since sea-level rise for these countries could be devastating.

The Baltic and International Maritime Council, the world’s biggest shipping consortium, celebrated the agreement.

“IMO has done something no one has done before: set an absolute target for emission reductions for an entire industry. It is a landmark achievement in the effort to reduce emissions, and something that every other industry should look to for inspiration,” Lars Robert Pedersen, the group’s deputy secretary general, said in a statement.

For shipping to decarbonize, current fuel oils would have to be replaced by biofuels or, perhaps  ultimately, hydrogen or batteries. But such innovations so far are being tested only in smaller ships, rather than the largest vessels, Rutherford said.

“The largest container ships use a tremendous amount of energy. They’re going to be harder to electrify or put hydrogen in,” he said.

A large emphasis will also certainly be placed on more energy-efficient designs to maximize the work performed by current fuels.

The current document is referred to as an “initial strategy.” But from here, IMO is expected to move ahead with regulations for global shipping that will gradually require these carbon-saving changes to the industry. Those could include mandatory energy-efficiency requirements, speed limits or other measures.

2872. Polluters on the High Sea

By Hilda Heine and Christiana Figueres, The New York Times, April 6, 2018

OOCL is the lrgest containership 1,312 feet (399.9 meter) long with gross tonage of 210,890 . It is large enough to carry carnes abroad. 

International shipping is the backbone of our global trading system. But it can no longer be given a free pass on climate change. If this industrial sector were a country, it would be the sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world — and if it doesn’t act now to reduce those emissions, by 2050 they could surpass total anticipated European emissions.

The International Maritime Organization, which sets regulatory standards for international shipping, is set to meet in London next week to consider approaches to reducing these emissions. So far, progress by the I.M.O. has been agonizingly slow, and the group’s timetable — to develop an “initial strategy” next week and a plan by 2023 — is similarly dilatory.

If the I.M.O. does not take action quickly, there is no hope of keeping the global temperature increase below the tipping points set by the Paris climate agreement. This is only possible if emissions peak by 2020 and decline rapidly thereafter. Every industrial sector, as well as country, must play its part in reaching the goal. And international shipping is the last big sector regulated by the United Nations to act.

Unfortunately, some countries that advocate the merits of climate action elsewhere are not singing from the same song sheet at the I.M.O., where talks are already underway.

The good news is that this is actually an important economic opportunity for international shipping if it wants to remain the cheapest low-carbon option for our global supply chain. Certainty about emissions standards is necessary to encourage the right kind of investment now. As Alistair Marsh, the chief executive of Lloyd’s Register, which provides consulting services to the shipping industry, said recently, “The later we leave decarbonization, the more disruptive it will be for shipping.”

Fortunately, solutions exist. A 2009 study by the I.M.O. found that “a significant potential” for reducing emissions “through technical and operational measures has been identified.” 

Those measures, according to the study, “could increase efficiency and reduce the emissions rate by 25 percent to 75 percent below the current levels. Many of these measures appear to be cost-effective.” But impediments, including “costs, a lack of incentives and other barriers, prevent many of them from being adopted,” the report added.

The Marshall Islands first proposed an industrywide target to curb shipping’s rising emissions in the lead-up to the 2015 Paris climate conference. The Marshall Islands may be a tiny, climate-vulnerable nation of low-lying islands and atolls threatened by rising seas, but it also hosts the world’s second-largest shipping registry and is almost entirely reliant on sea transportation for food and other crucial supplies. Given all this, perhaps no country is better placed to highlight the need to act, and to do so in a way that is economically sustainable.

In Paris, the Marshall Islands went on to form a High Ambition Coalition of progressive countries that was pivotal to securing the final agreement. That coalition is mobilizing once again, with the Pacific Island nations, the Caribbean, Latin American countries, Europe and others already working together to ensure a similarly strong outcome next week. While the Marshall Islands may be one of the countries most at risk from climate change, no country will be safe.

With this in mind, nearly 50 countries have already joined the Tony de Brum Declaration, which has called for urgent action to reduce the shipping industry’s emissions. The declaration, sponsored by the Marshall Islands and President Emmanuel Macron of France at the One Planet Summit in Paris last December, is named in honor of our friend, the former foreign minister of the Marshall Islands and a champion of the Paris Agreement, who died last year.

Countries truly committed to climate action will not accept anything less than a strong deal next week. But despite efforts by the I.M.O.’s secretary general, Kitack Lim, tackling shipping emissions still remains far down in the political in-tray of too many countries.

We need to change that, and change it quickly. Delaying action until 2023, as some have suggested, is waiting too long. In 2016 the world agreed on a similar deal to regulate aviation emissions, as well as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which will phase down planet-warming refrigerants. And recent initiatives to tackle coal and to boost electric vehicles are showing that the economy is shifting much faster to reducing greenhouse gas emissions than many thought possible.

To achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change across the globe, we cannot forget about international shipping. The world needs to take notice.

Hilda Heine is the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Christiana Figueres is the former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.