Inside Climate News: Pacific and Caribbean Island Nations Call for the First Universal Carbon Levy on International Shipping Emissions
Earlier this month, the group met in London with representatives from nearly 200 IMO member states to discuss the organizations’ plans to decarbonize the industry, which were laid out last year in its 2023 Revised Greenhouse Gas Strategy. The plan strives to achieve several interim goals of reducing emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2040, and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. But how the industry will implement the plan to reach these goals is still up for debate.
During this month’s meetings, member states not only discussed the proposed levy, but also the need to improve fleets’ overall efficiency by using wind and solar energy for ship propulsion and adopting a global fuel standard.
Currently, most marine vessels typically use highly polluting heavy fuel oil. “It’s like the hot dog of fuel oils,” said Delaine McCullough, who has been supporting the 6PAC + Alliance in their advocacy in her role as president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, an international association of civil society environmental protection organizations focused on shipping.“It’s much cheaper to ship several thousand containers of consumer products on a vessel than to drive them individually by truck. The shipping industry provides lots of benefits, but it does so by burning really, really filthy fuel, and that’s contributing to our climate crisis.”
As the IMO looks to transition away from fossil fuels, there is debate over which alternatives to use. Some biofuels may be cheap and easy to turn to, but are problematic, said McCullough.
Producing them can have inadvertent impacts on food security and biodiversity, she said. The most promising alternatives, she said, are electrolytic hydrogen based fuels known as e-fuels. These fuels are produced through a process called electrolysis, which separates water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable energy sources.
But decarbonizing global fleets will be expensive. “It will have a high price tag,” said McCullough.
