Shipping Groups Welcome Progress at MEPC 73

Esben Poulsson, Chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping. Image Credit: ICS

With the 73rd session of IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC73) concluding Friday, major shipping groups including European Community Shipowners' Associations (ECSA), BIMCO, and International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) have all voiced their satisfaction with the industry's progress at last week's key meeting that tackled not only the immediate matter of the IMO 2020 sulfur cap, but also the upcoming challenges of IMO2030 and IMO2050 GHG targets.

Green groups, however, were less than enamoured with developments.

As far as IMO 2020 is concerned, ECSA, BIMCO, and ICS were all among those to voice approval for the adoption of the fuel oil carriage ban, a move widely viewed as being critical for effective enforcement of the new rule.

BIMCO and the Danish Maritime Authority (DMA), meanwhile, welcomed clarification (yet again) that there will be no change to the January 1, 2020 start date for the new 0.50% sulfur cap.

"It is important that it has yet again been established that the rules apply from 1 January 2020, and that they will be enforced," Andreas Nordseth, Director-General of the Danish Maritime Authority.

But despite being dominated by IMO 2020, several items related to Shipping's GHG pledge were also on the agenda.

"IMO also made very good progress towards implementing the ambitious GHG reduction strategy agreed in April, adopting an Action Plan for the development of short term measures that will deliver additional CO2 reductions before 2023 plus longer term measures that will eventually achieve full decarbonisation of international shipping," ICS Chairman, Esben Poulsson commented.

But this was the very area to vex NGO Transport and Environment, with the group's shipping director, Bill Hemmings, accusing IMO of "congratulating itself on quite mediocre progress on greenhouse gas emissions."

"Governments meeting at the UN's International Maritime Organisation (IMO) were supposed to start delivering on their April commitment to decarbonise international shipping but instead became bogged down in procedural matters," the group said.

"Measures are urgently needed if the IMO's agreed plan – to reduce shipping's carbon intensity by at least 40% by 2030 and total emissions by at least 50% by 2050 – is to be met. The April agreement included a commitment to deliver immediate measures that reduce emissions before 2023. Yet developments [at MEPC73 last week] mean that consideration of those measures will now only commence in May 2019, over a year after the original agreement was reached."