The MEPC 84 meeting will take place from April 27 to May 1. Image Credit: IMO

Discussions at the IMO’s intersessional working group meeting last week have made good progress on shaping the Net Zero Framework (NZF), according to the UCL Shipping and Oceans Research Group.

Held ahead of MEPC 84 taking place this week in London, the meeting worked through how the framework could function in practice, offering more clarity than was available when a decision was deferred in October 2025, it said in an email update on Friday.

“Given the outcome of MEPC.ES2 in October 2025, many have assumed that the NZF had no future and the IMO faced a long delay and a major redesign of this key policy, Dr Tristan Smith, Professor of UCL, said.

“This meeting’s cooperation, outputs and political landscape challenges that assumption and suggests that renewed efforts to find a way forwards inclusive of GHG pricing are important to avoid deadlock, as well as to ensure delivery on IMO’s revised strategy commitments."

Broad Engagement on Net Zero Fund

The Net-Zero Fund, part of the NZF, will collect and channel revenues from a global emissions pricing system to support zero- and low-carbon marine fuels and technologies.

A total of 39 countries engaged in discussions on revenue collection and distribution, including the Net Zero Fund.

Of these, 16 countries that had previously supported delaying the framework or abstained are now participating, while only four declined to engage on fund-related topics.

“Strong and continued engagement on the Net Zero Fund underscores broad interest in an economic element within the IMO’s Net Zero Framework, with many countries pushing for accelerated and intersessional work, an indication that such mechanisms remain central,” Dr Annika Frosch, Research Fellow at UCL, said.

In a submission to the MEPC 84 earlier this month, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Togo stressed that the fund “will collect substantial revenues” but could face unclear allocation and weak transparency without a defined structure

Policy Focus And Next Steps

The group agreed not to take forward the multiplier concept, with support for zero- and near-zero fuels expected to come via a reward mechanism linked to the fund.

Options under consideration include a flat IMO-set rate and a reverse auction model.

"There remain key questions for further work, on how IMO’s policy could incentivise shipping’s energy transition, particularly how the reward mechanism might support the early adopters – crucial as the pre-cursors to shipping’s mass market transition," Dr Marie Fricaudet, senior research fellow at UCL, said.

The outcomes will now feed into discussions at 84th meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), where member states are expected to continue work on the framework’s design and implementation.