Swedish MEP Jörgen Warborn (EPP)’s draft report on sustainable fuels in the maritime sector (‘FuelEU Maritime’) (see EUROPE 12892/33) will be presented to the members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport on 20 April. While the rapporteur supports the level of ambition proposed by the Commission, as well as the type of ships concerned and the geographical scope of the draft text, several changes have been made concerning compliance costs, the calculation of emission factors and the future development of the text over time.
“I will do my utmost to strike a balance between climate and competitiveness. We should be ambitious, but not overambitious. In light of the extreme spikes in energy and fuel prices, we need to be cautious not to add unreasonable burdens that cause prices to rise even further. Because the bill will ultimately always be paid by European households”, commented Mr Warborn in a note that EUROPE also had access to.
The draft report firstly proposes to oblige the Commission to present, by 1 January 2024, compensation measures for new compliance costs in order to “avoid an increase in the overall level of regulatory burden”.
This, the document states, could include the revision or deletion of provisions in other legislation that also generate compliance costs for the maritime sector.
The report also calls for the establishment of a ‘Maritime Transition Fund’, with revenues generated from the auctioning of maritime allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System to be channelled back to the maritime sector.
Technically, the rapporteur also advocates for aligning the text with the future regulation on alternative fuels (see EUROPE 12899/21) and with the proposed revisions of the Renewable Energy and Energy Taxation Directives.
In addition, the report also stresses the need for legal certainty and considers that any future revisions of the regulation should be limited in scope and should not involve “significant” changes to the requirements set out.
The rapporteur also suggests that the rules should be abolished in the event that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) itself adopts binding rules on greenhouse gas emissions. This would, the paper says, “remove any competitive disadvantage for European shipping companies”.
In the meantime, the document states that the Commission will have to report to the European Parliament and the EU Council by 1 January 2030 at the latest and every 3 years until 2051 on the results of the assessment of the functioning of the regulation, the extent of carbon leakage and technological and market developments in alternative fuels.
The possibility of using actual values for the calculation of emissions
Also in the area of emissions, the regulation provides tables of default reference values for the calculation of emission factors over the life cycle of a fuel. Jörgen Warborn’s report suggests that these tables should be supplemented by the possibility for a ship owner or operator to use actual values for emissions, provided that these values are certified by laboratory tests or direct measurements.
Changes have also been made on the issue of on-shore power supply (OPS). On this point, the rapporteur proposes that the obligation to connect to OPS supply should apply to ships calling on ports falling within the scope of the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, and not on all EU ports. This, the report says, would safeguard the competitiveness of small ports that are not part of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T).
Only ships above 5,000 gross tonnes would be affected by the obligation to connect.
Furthermore, the report provides for the exclusion from this obligation of ships calling for less than 2 hours and those which had planned not to exceed this duration but which, for exceptional reasons, cannot leave in time.
Finally, fuel suppliers who are found to have provided misleading or inaccurate information on the GHG intensity of the fuels they supply should be subject to a penalty. In the event of a repeat offence, the offending suppliers could be blacklisted from certification schemes. All fuels delivered from their facilities would then be “considered to have the same emission factor as the least favourable fossil fuel”.
On the side of the ship operators, the company would have to pay a fine if the ship is non-compliant on 1 May of the year following the reporting period.
For each non-compliant stopover, the report also foresees that the company would have to pay a penalty based on multiplying the number of megawatts of power on board by 250 euros and by the number of full hours spent dockside.
The revenue generated, the report adds, would go to the Innovation Fund and should “be used to promote the distribution and use of renewable and low carbon fuels and propulsion technologies in the maritime sector”.
See the draft report: https://aeur.eu/f/11e (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)