Image credit: International Chamber of Shipping (ICS)

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The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has launched a new publication to endorse the recent adoption by the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) of its strategy for phasing out CO2 emissions from the international shipping sector.

Entitled Reducing CO2 Emissions to Zero: The 'Paris Agreement for Shipping', the document explains what IMO member state agreement could mean for international shipping. These targets include an efficiency improvement of least 40 percent (as an average across the fleet compared to 2008) and a 50 percent cut of the sector's total greenhouse emissions by 2050, regardless of future trade growth.

The publication also explores possibilities for the development of zero CO2 fuels - which will almost certainly be required if a 50 perecent total cut in GHG emissions is going to be delivered before 2050 - as well as investigating policy options for short- and medium-term regulatory measures.

Opposition to mandatory operational efficiency indexing

Reducing CO2 Emissions to Zero sets out ICS's firm opposition to the concept of mandatory operational efficiency indexing of individual ships as a possible candidate measure for CO2 reduction, which ICS argues would lead to "serious market distortion".

ICS also argues that the European Union needs to align its regional system for collecting CO2 data from ships with the global system that has been established by IMO.

In the introduction, ICS chairman Esben Poulsson explains: "We now expect discussions at IMO to begin in earnest on the development of additional CO2 reduction measures, including those to be implemented before 2023. ICS will continue to participate constructively."

Reducing CO2 Emissions to Zero can be downloaded by clicking here.