EMEA News
MEPC80: Shipping Can Meet GHG Target if Industry Works Together, Says Kitack Lim
Decisions made at the International Maritime Organisation this week will make the cost of shipping goods more expensive as the sector seeks to curtail its greenhouse gas output.
All states and Industry will feel the impact of the change, IMO secretary-general Kitack Lim told the media on July 3.
Change will come via two main tools, technical measures -- a fuel standard, to determine the carbon content of fuel -- and economic measures, by putting a price on carbon. These two policy pillars were agreed at the last MEPC meeting and how they will work in practice will be discussed this week.
Lim said that he understood that the marine sectors including bunkering needed "regulatory certainty" in order to plan ahead. With clarity, parties can start to work together and "we are going to encourage those collaborations".
The secretary-general said a good example of industry working together could seen in 2019, just before IMO2020, when the global sulfur cap fell from 3.5% to 0.5%. It was a "very challenging time", he said, "but all the stakeholders came to together and started to collaborate" which made it work.
With that experience in mind, Lim said that once the decision is adopted this week, the IMO will organise an all stakeholder meeting with the energy sector, shipping, bunkering, shipbuilding, ship repair yards, agents and finance "to see how we can help each other" to meet the targets to restrict GHG from shipping.
