According to two documents obtained by EUROPE, the EU Council is preparing its contribution to the 15th meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Intersessional Working Group on Greenhouse Gases (IGWG), which will be held from Monday 3 to Friday 7 July 2023. The IMO Strategy Roadmap for Reducing GHG Emissions from Ships foresees a review in 2023, which should raise the ambition levels.
The first document, which is a European Commission working document of Thursday 27 April for the EU Council, contains proposed levels of ambition. The EU states that the reduction of GHG emissions from the marine fuel value chain should be achieved without resorting to offsets outside the value chain. This reduction should reach 100% by 2050 at the latest.
With ambitious checkpoints, the EU suggests that GHG emissions be reduced by at least 29% by 2030 and by at least 83% by 2040 compared to 2008. It proposes to include a checkpoint to achieve at least 10% of the energy used by the international fleet from zero-emission or near-zero-emission fuels and/or energy sources on the basis of a life-cycle assessment by 2030. The idea is to “stimulate the uptake of new fuels by specifying a minimum amount of early adoption of new fuel that could constitute a tipping point, allowing subsequent rapid scaling and further use in the 2030’s”.
According to the second document, a Swedish Presidency compromise that was presented at the meeting of the Maritime Transport Group on Thursday 4 May 2023, the EU also wants to propose an information obligation for fuel suppliers. They would be required to provide information on certified ‘Well-to-Tank’ (WtT) GHG emissions - including emissions from extraction, production, conversion, transportation, distribution, etc. - and to report on the use of these emissions. This measure “fully respects the jurisdiction that States have over regulating fuel production plants and the freedom of States to design climate policy”.
These targets are part of the ‘Maritime FuelEU’ initiative on the use of renewable and low-carbon fuels in maritime transport, which was the subject of an institutional agreement in March (see EUROPE 13133/8).
To read the European Commission’s working document: https://aeur.eu/f/6ru
And the Presidency’s compromise proposal: https://aeur.eu/f/6rv (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)