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International Chamber of Shipping to UN: Act now on CO2 before EU does

THE International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has appealed to the UN's International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to settle for a half a loaf by setting up a mandatory monitoring and reporting of ship carbon emissions to get a global scheme in place before the EU acts on its own and imposes a regional tax.

"The IMO is now confronted by the danger of unilateral action by the EU, which is already considering a regulation on monitoring and reporting of ship emissions, which risks destroying a global approach," said ICS secretary general Peter Hinchliffe.

"We are a global industry requiring global rules. Otherwise we have chaos and inefficiency," said Mr Hinchliffe, reported London's Tanker Operator.

The ICS said that it hoped that governments can agree to work in stages, then IMO states can proceed towards the early adoption of mandatory CO2 monitoring and reporting that could be enforced worldwide.

In its November 23 communique, the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw ended saying it had only established a "pathway for governments to work on a draft text of a new universal climate agreement".

The ICS said focusing on monitoring and reporting measures now the UN would not prejudice any national position on taking stronger action which is not to be expected by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) until 2015, with the understanding that no universal tax scheme would be in place until 2020.

The chamber also said reporting and monitoring could be done relatively quickly and might be acceptable to those governments that may not yet be ready to commit to more radical CO2 reduction taxes.

The ICS suggested that IMO member states should initially focus on developing regulations for the mandatory reporting of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, deferring further discussions on how the information might be applied.

The ICS, which represents global shipowners and shipmanagers, argued that if IMO can make further progress one step at a time in a three-phase approach, already proposed by the US, it would have little negative impact on efforts to reduce emissions.

An incentive to reduce CO2 emissions is already in place, as costly low sulphur fuel use will increase due to separate IMO requirements. This is already the industry's largest variable operating cost, typically now amounting three times the capital cost of the ship itself.