The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted a revised strategy seeking to cut the shipping industry's 1 million mt/year of GHG emissions to net zero by around 2050, according to Ship & Bunker.
The revised strategy was adopted at the 80th meeting of the UN body's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 80) in London on Friday morning.
The strategy sets a level of ambition of GHG emissions from shipping peaking as soon as possible and reaching net-zero 'by or around 2050, taking into account different national circumstances'.
The document also sets 'indicative checkpoints' of total shipping GHG emissions being reduced by at least 20%, striving for 30%, from 2008's levels by 2030, and by at least 70%, striving for 80%, by 2040. The strategy sets an additional ambition for uptake of zero- or near-zero-GHG emission technologies, fuels or energy sources to reach at least 5%, striving for 10%, of total energy demand from international shipping by 2030.
The IMO's initial GHG strategy, set in 2018, envisaged a cut of least 40% in carbon emissions per transport work from 2008's levels by 2030, and a cut of at least 50% in the shipping industry's total GHG emissions by 2050.
The organisation has set itself the deadline of 2025 to agree a basket of mid-term measures to support the GHG strategy. This should include both a goal-based marine fuel standard regulating a phased reduction in the GHG intensity of marine fuels, and a GHG emissions pricing mechanism for shipping. These measures will take into account the full well-to-wake GHG emissions of marine fuels.
A comprehensive impact assessment of each of the mid-term measures being considered will be carried out from this summer, preparing an interim report by MEPC 81 in the spring of next year and a final report by MEPC 82 in the autumn of next year.
The measures chosen are envisaged to be approved at MEPC 83 before being adopted at an extraordinary one- or two-day meeting of the MEPC in the autumn of 2025. The earliest point at which these measures could then come into force would be in 2027, 16 months after their adoption.
Environmental groups have already argued the deal is not aligned with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
The determination that a GHG levy cannot come into effect before 2027 is likely to mean that individual countries and regional bodies decide to start charging shipping for its GHG emissions at a local level before that point, a fragmentation of global maritime regulation that the IMO has previously sought to avoid.
The EU has already decided to start including shipping in its emissions trading system from next year, and the UK plans to apply emissions trading to domestic shipping from 2026.