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The Global Industry Alliance to Support Low Carbon Shipping (GIA) assembled in the UK this week for the third meeting of the GIA Taskforce and its first Ideas Generation Workshop.

The GIA Taskforce meeting - held on May 29-30 in Shoreham-by-Sea - progressed work on several ongoing projects, including: the validation of performance of Energy Efficiency Technologies (EETs); the assessment of barriers to the uptake of Just-in-Time Operation of ships and resulting emission- and fuel-saving opportunities from its implementation; as well as work on the current status and application of alternative fuels in the maritime sector and barriers to their uptake.

The GIA is also developing an E-Learning course on the Energy Efficient Operation of Ships, which is expected to be completed and launched later this year.

For the first time, the GIA held an Ideas Generation Workshop to brainstorm further ideas and concrete actions that could be taken to further reduce emissions. This included discussions on disruptive technologies that can deliver the step-change required for shipping to decarbonize, as well as enabling technologies that have the potential to support the industry's transition to zero emissions.

The GIA also considered the short-term candidate measures contained in the Initial IMO Strategy on the reduction of GHG emissions from ships, and brainstormed specific ideas on how first movers could be incentivized to develop and take up new technologies.

In a video message to the GIA, Peter Thomson, the United Nations Special Envoy for Oceans, highlighted the importance of partnerships like the GIA in contributing to the solutions required to decarbonize the maritime transport sector, describing these types of alliances as "the right medicine, with the ability to provide great support to IMO in the implementation of the recently adopted Initial GHG Strategy".

The GIA Taskforce meeting and workshop were hosted by one of the GIA founding members, Ricardo UK Ltd, and attended by representatives of 14 GIA members, UNDP's Andrew Hudson, and IMO's Jose Matheickal, Astrid Dispert and Minglee Hoe.

The GIA is a public-private partnership initiative of the IMO, under the framework of the GEF-UNDP-IMO Global Maritime Energy Efficiency Partnerships (GloMEEP) Project, that aims to bring together maritime industry leaders to support an energy efficient and low carbon maritime transport system.

The Taskforce re-elected Claes Berglund (Stena AB) as chair for the GIA's second membership year.