Shipping fuel dilemma

HOUSTON - The shipping industry is under increasing pressure to decarbonise, but unclear regulatory guidelines, including around what sorts of cleaner fuels large vessels should run, is complicating that path to net zero, according to executives.

Global shipping firms are looking for ways to lower their carbon footprints, particularly as the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which regulates the global shipping industry, is being pushed to implement a charge on the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The IMO’s Maritime Environment Protection Committee concluded its 81st meeting last week, and participants agreed on a possible draft outline of an IMO net-zero framework. Those guidelines, which could bring forward a fuel standard and emissions price, are still open to discussion and could be adopted or amended at the group’s next meeting this September.

Shifting to cleaner burner fuels is one path to lowering emissions, executives said last week at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, but many in the industry are reluctant to make the changes needed to run new fuels - such as retrofitting engines or purchasing new vessels - given the lack of a longer-term regulatory framework.

“None of us like the fact that we are burning dirty fuel. But no authority is answering what the best fuel is,” Andrew Jamieson, cohead of Clearlake Shipping said on the sidelines of the conference.

Shipping accounts for roughly 90 per cent of world trade and is responsible for nearly 3 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.