BW Group: Shipping Should Lead in Emissions Reduction

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Monday October 13, 2014

BW Group's Andreas Sohmen-Pao says the shipping industry should take the lead on reducing carbon emissions, Seatrade Global reports. 

“I think carbon pressure is coming and it’s coming fast and we need to get ahead of it because if we are sitting here in five years without having done anything on mitigation then we are going to be in this usual disarray of trying to deal with all these proposals cap and trade, this that and the other, rather than us taking the lead and saying here is a framework,” Sohmen-Pao said at the Danish Maritime Forum in Copenhagen.

Sohmen-Pao once again brought up the idea of a carbon tax, suggesting a $10 tax per tonne on bunker fuel, which would rise from there on a fixed schedule for about a decade to ease companies into the transition.   

That, he said, could generate between $10 billion and $20 billion in revenue over 10 years, which could be used to solve other environmental problems in the industry. 

“I can think of lots of good uses in the environmental sphere for example green scrapping and lo and behold we have solved overcapacity, we’ve solved problems with scrapping in Bangladesh and India and we’ve started to make a move on carbon,” he said. 

Sohmen-Pao did however acknowledge the difficulty in getting companies to agree one one topic, saying that he believed that overall, the industry is getting worse at consensus building. 

Earlier this year, BW Group bought 10 chemical tankers equipped with eco-design hulls and fuel-saving engines.

Ship & Bunker News Team
To contact the editor responsible for this story email us at editor@shipandbunker.com