EMEA News
UK Government Seeks Feedback on Imposing Emissions Trading System on Shipping
The British government is seeking feedback on how to expand its emissions trading system to cover the shipping industry.
Domestic shipping will be included in the UK-ETS from 2026, and the government is seeking input on proposals for how to achieve that, the government said in a statement on its website on Thursday.
The government is calling for feedback on the following aspects of the issue, according to the statement:
- the scope of the scheme (definition of a domestic voyage, thresholds for inclusion, the inclusion of methane and nitrous oxide emissions and exemptions from the scheme)
- details around how to adjust the UK ETS cap to include emissions from the maritime sector
- participating in the scheme (regulatory regime and operator requirements, monitoring, reporting and verification, point of obligation and guidance)
- impacts of the scheme (decarbonisation impacts, potential distributional impacts and carbon leakage risk; equality considerations)
- potential future expansion of the UK ETS to additional maritime emissions, with a future review of the threshold and coverage of international routes
"We envisage that including maritime within the UK ETS can help overcome a key barrier to decarbonising the sector, which is that the prices of maritime fuels currently do not reflect their environmental costs," the government said.
"Including the maritime sector within the scheme could also strengthen the incentive to adopt low carbon fuels, and support deployment of fuel-efficient technologies and the introduction of fuel-efficient operating practices.
"The purpose of this consultation is to provide more detail and consult on the implementation of how maritime will be incorporated in the scheme from 2026 and to propose and consult on potential future expansion of the UK ETS to additional maritime emissions."
