EMEA News
LISW23: UK Transport Minister Sees Geopolitical Tensions Accelerating Decarbonisation
The British government sees recent geopolitical tensions since the outbreak of war in Ukraine as primarily a driver of, rather than an obstacle to, the decarbonisation of the transport industry.
UK Transport Minister Mark Harper addressed the question of the impact of geopolitics on transport decarbonisation in a session at the London International Shipping Week headline conference on Wednesday.
"The geopolitical tensions could be a problem," Harper said.
"But actually, if you think about what are the big drivers domestically on decarbonisation, they're actually being accelerated by what's happened as a a result of those Russian actions.
"What that has told us is that, not just for climate-change reasons, there are some very good other reasons to become less dependant upon fossil fuels, to make sure that we are less dependent on some of the countries in the world that produce them, which are not necessarily countries on which we would want to be dependent.
"People can see that decarbonising out energy production and the fuels we use for our transport system is actually the right thing to do.
"The challenge is to make sure that we take every country with us, and I think the negotiations that took place here [at the IMO] in July demonstrate that you can have an ambitious target."
