Paris Talks to Target Shipping Emissions
194 nations last week agreed at the Geneva Climate Change Talks to a negotiating text which could see international emissions caps placed on the shipping industry by 2020.
Shipping is a large and growing source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change. A move to cap emissions from shipping companies has emerged in talks on the global climate change agreement to be signed in Paris at the end of this year, reports FT
More than 190 countries began working on in Geneva last week with the idea of imposing carbon pollution targets on shipping industry has appeared in the lengthy negotiating text.
An additional proposal in the Paris negotiating text would “encourage” international shipping bodies to develop a levy scheme to help countries adapt to climate change.
The European Union wants a global approach taken to reducing emissions from international shipping. As a first step towards cutting emissions, the European Commission has proposed that owners of large ships using EU ports should report their verified emissions from 2018.
Emissions from the global shipping industry amount to around 1 billion tonnes a year, accounting for 3% of the world's total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 4% of the EU's total emissions.
Without action, these emissions are expected to more than double by 2050. This is not compatible with the internationally agreed goal of keeping global warming below 2°C, which requires worldwide emissions to be at least halved from 1990 levels by 2050.
Meanwhile, the emissions from Arctic shipping traffic could rise 150-600 percent by 2025, the environmental group Friends of the Earth reports.
As global warming intensifies and Arctic sea ice melts, marine vessel traffic is expected to increase and amplify the levels of harmful pollution emitted into the atmosphere, a new report by the International Council on Clean Transportation says.