Asia/Pacific News
IBIA CONVENTION 2025: 'Something Has to Change' For IMO NZF to Pass
Any repeated attempt to adopt the IMO's net-zero framework without substantial change is likely to fail, according to cruise industry body CLIA.
After the UN body's Marine Environment Protection Committee decided last month to delay a vote on the NZF by a year, change will now be needed for the measure to pass, Bud Darr, CEO of CLIA, said at the IBIA Annual Convention 2025 in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
"With IMO, something has to change to put the same proposal back on the table in November," Darr said.
"To me, it is an opportunity to fail exactly as we failed before, or maybe with some variation.
"Because I don't think success here is defined as, 'OK, we have two thirds of the parties to the annex present voting yes - you lose'.
"It has to be more sophisticated than that, and more collaborative than we have seen to date in that regard."
Last month's MEPC meeting voted for a delay after significant opposition to the NZF emerged, in particular from the US. The US had threatened to impose tariffs and other punitive measures on countries voting for the deal if it passed, with President Donald Trump characterising the framework as 'this global green new scam tax on shipping'.
57 delegations voted to delay, 49 countries opposed the motion and 21 abstained. Two EU member states, Greece and Cyprus, went against the bloc's usual practice of voting together, with both abstaining on the delay measure.
"I do not currently see a process in place that has the structure to allow another reasonable proposal to be made, or a modified one," Darr said.
"That needs to happen now, and the industry, I think, needs to be calling for it, and we need to work together."
The net-zero framework, provisionally approved in April of this year, would have set progressively tougher carbon intensity requirements for marine fuels from the years 2028 to 2035, having first come into force in March 2027.
"I look forward to the day when maybe IMO can go back to doing what it's good at, which is solving technical problems; it's not so good at solving the geopolitical problems," Darr said.
