Integrating international shipping emissions into the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is an essential first step in limiting the sector's climate impact, but will not be enough, warned the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E) in a report published on Monday 9 December.
The organisation therefore calls on the EU to take additional measures to "make shipping do its fair share " in order to reduce carbon emissions.
Among these, T&E recommends in particular to establish a standard on the amount of CO2 that ships can emit during their activity.
While the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), a shipping company, has joined coal-fired power plants and Ryanair in the list of the EU's top ten carbon emitters, T&E notes that the MSC would remain in eighth place on this list even if shipping were part of the EU ETS.
The report also shows that there is a large performance gap in CO2 emissions between ship design standards and real-world maritime operations.
As a result of this performance gap, T&E estimates that half the EU cargo shipping emitted about 22 megatonnes more CO2 than what it would have emitted if ships operated according to their design standard.
"This highlights the inadequacy of the ship design standard as a regulatory tool to decarbonise the sector ", concludes the NGO.
Finally, according to this study, the emissions of ships carrying goods to and from France are higher than the CO2 emissions of all cars in the ten largest French cities and the Grand Est region combined.
To consult the report: https://bit.ly/2E1zYqC (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)