The proposal, approved by the European Parliament’s environment committee, to include emissions from the maritime transport sector in the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) provoked the ire of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) which, in turn, brought strong criticism on Wednesday 11 January from a group of NGOs campaigning for clean maritime transport.
The Clean Shipping Coalition (CSC), a group of NGOs which has observer status at the IMO, slammed the warning by IMO Secretary General Kitack Lim to the EU on 9 against any move of this sort at regional level arguing that such a measure would be premature and counterproductive.
“The challenge of meeting the objective of the Paris Agreement is so great that it will require action at all levels. There is nothing that says action can only take place at IMO and indeed it would be counterproductive to concentrate only on the development of IMO measures, when processes there are often subject to delay. The IMO’s criticism of EU action is unfortunate and we call on the Secretary General to take stock and press IMO members to urgently agree targets and measures at a global level”, stated CSC President John Maggs in a press release.
Faig Abbasov, clean shipping officer of Transport & Environment (T&E), an NGO which campaigns for sustainable transport, said: “It is wrong for the head of the IMO to condemn the European Parliament’s actions, when it has the direct legitimacy of European citizens, and is working hard to protect those citizens from the impact of shipping’s ever-increasing contribution to climate change”. He added with a hint of irony: “We are not aware of Mr Lim writing to those countries and industry bodies that have consistently been blocking progress on ship GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions at IMO for years”.
The text on the long-term reform of the ETS approved by the environment committee on 15 December 2016 includes maritime transport in the scheme from 2023 were it to be that the IMO fails to agree a global measure by 2021 to tackle the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions (see EUROPE 11690).
In a letter to European Parliament President Martin Schulz, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk on 9 January, Kitack Lim wrote: “I am concerned that a final decision to extend the EU-ETS to shipping emissions would not only be premature but would seriously impact on the work of IMO to address GHG emissions from international shipping. Inclusion of emissions from ships in the EU-ETS significantly risks undermining efforts on a global level”.
The EU has always said that its measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) system for emissions from large shipping vessels (in force since July 2015 and operational from 2018) was the first step towards reducing maritime transport’s greenhouse gas emissions and Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc is hopeful of an IMO market-based measure, if possible in 2017 (see EUROPE 11630). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)