IMCA Backs IMO's Emissions Roadmap

 

According to the agreed timeline, IMO will initiate its decision-making on further measures to tackle the challenge of GHG from shipping in 2022. “We welcomed the unanimous international decision at IMO on this important issue; obtaining it took many years of negotiations and intense discussions,” explains John Bradshaw, IMCA’s Policy and Regulatory Affairs Manager.

 

“We are therefore disturbed by recent developments that saw the EU Environment Committee agree in mid-December on a set of reforms to the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for the period 2021-2030, and set to include shipping by 2023.  The EU Industry Committee had taken the opposite view only a month before. This European decision could lead to the IMO process, relating to shipping all around the globe, being derailed.

 

In response to this development, IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim has written to Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament), Jean-Claude Juncker (President of the European Commission) and Donald Tusk (President of the European Council), expressing his concern that including shipping in the European Union’s Emission Trading System (EU-ETS) could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shipping on a global basis. Mr. Lim cautioned against extending the EU-ETS to include ships, advising that extending the EU-ETS to shipping emissions would be premature and would seriously impact on the work of IMO to address GHG emissions from international shipping. Mr. Lim expressed concern that such a move would significantly risk undermining global efforts.

 

IMCA welcomes and supports the intervention of Mr. Lim and would urge MEPs to ensure that shipping is not included in the EU’s final legislation. IMCA believes that a global problem requires a global solution; as such a global determination agreement to reduce GHG achieved at IMO is preferable to a regional one.