World - Choppy waters for sea shipping on clean fuel journey
Cargill’s recent trial of sea freight wind power signals a cleaner future for the sea shipping industry, but what are the cleaner-fuel options today?
The sea shipping sector is involved in an estimated 90% of global trade. Estimates from the International Chamber of Shipping suggest around 11bn tons of goods are transported by sea each year – everything from raw materials to finished products.
Sea shipping also accounts for around 3% of total global carbon emissions, which if unchecked could rise by as much as half again by 2050.
In short, shipping industry efforts to implement a programme of carbon-cutting measures is pivotal to the global bid to be net zero by 2050.
This is why the International Maritime Organization (IMO) – a specialised agency of the United Nations responsible for regulating shipping – has mandated emission reductions of 50% for all vessels by 2050. A number of countries, including Japan, the UK and the US, have also set similar net-zero shipping targets.
But progress is proving to be far from plain sailing, with recent top-level talks to tackle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the maritime transport industry slammed by environmentalists as “disheartening” and “tepid”.
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Those comments followed the 80th session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), held in London in July at the London HQ of the IMO.
The talks focused on the adoption by the IMO of an upgraded greenhouse gas strategy, and involved delegates from 175 shipping countries, all of whom are looking to set a timeline for decarbonising their industry.
The outcome of those talks was that the IMO set a revised target of a 10% reduction of GHG by 2030, with the earliest measures to achieve this not being put in place until 2027.
Diane Gilpin is Founder and CEO of Smart Green Shipping, a company that is unlocking wind power for the shipping industry.
"It's difficult not to be disheartened by the outcome of the IMO talks,” Gilpin says “Science tells us that anything less than 36% emissions reductions by 2030 and 96% by 2040 will be detrimental to keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees.”
