Governments must use this crucial two-week window to slash shipping’s climate heating greenhouse gas emissions. This means securing agreement on a strong energy efficiency measure (the Carbon Intensity Indicator), enforceable and ambitious global fuel standards, and a greenhouse gas levy on all shipping emissions that will dramatically reduce the sector’s contribution to the climate crisis.

Brazil has asked the UN to throw out plans for a new levy on global shipping that would raise funds to fight the climate crisis, despite playing host to the next UN climate summit.

The International shipping sector provides an outsized and growing contribution to the climate crisis. Slower, more efficient ships can help slash climate emissions, but this will not happen without ambitious regulation – John Maggs from the Clean Shipping Coalition writes on the need for a global fuel standard and levy.

The Clean Shipping Coalition has taken aim at emissions correction factors proposed by Angola, Brazil and Norway for an IMO green fuel standard, saying they would undermine the regulation’s power to cut shipping emissions

International shipping makes an outsized and growing contribution to the climate crisis. Ships also regularly kill whales and generate underwater noise that compromises the ability of whales and other marine life to forage and reproduce. By going more slowly, ships could slash their climate emissions and reduce both underwater noise and the risk of whale strikes—but as the Clean Shipping Coalition’s John Maggs explains, this shift won’t happen without ambitious regulation.

The International Maritime Organization has been asked to enact a carbon levy of $150 per ton of emissions from large freight and passenger ships. The IMO’s 175 member nations have until next year to vote.