Industry leaders want zero emissions by 2050, carbon tax by 2025

Written by Nick Blenkey
black carbon emissions

Shutterstock

As climate change takes center stage at the UN General Assembly, more than 150 leading players from across the shipping value chain have signed on to a “Call to Action for Shipping Decarbonization,” that calls on governments to:

  • Commit to decarbonizing international shipping by 2050
  • Support industrial scale zero emission shipping projects through national action
  • Deliver policy measures that will make zero emission shipping the default choice by 2030

As ever the devil is in the detail and those “policy measures” would seem to amount to a carbon tax, in some form or another, though the expression used to sugar coat that is “market based measures.”

The Call for Action says:

“Closing the competitiveness gap through policy action Despite the potential to significantly reduce the cost of zero emission fuels over the coming decade, it will not be enough to close the competitiveness gap with fossil fuels. This means that the market alone will not be able to make zero emission shipping commercially viable at the required scale. By 2025, policy makers must therefore put in place clear, effective, and equitable policy frameworks, such as meaningful market-based measures, to make zero emission shipping commercially viable.”

The Call to Action was developed by a multi-stakeholder task force convened by the iGlobal Maritime Forum’s Getting to Zero Coalition. The task force members include shipping, chartering, finance, ports, and fuel production interests. The Call to Action will be delivered to world governments in November 2021, in advance of COP26.

You can download the Call for Actions along with a full list of signatories here.

Importantly, those signatories, who include banks and charterers, are themselves already taking steps to decarbonize. They could affect you. Read about them here.

Categories: Environment, News, Shipping Tags: , ,