The
International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has warned of ‘chaos and
confusion’ unless the IMO urgently resolves some serious issues
concerning the implementation of the forthcoming 0.5% sulfur in marine
fuel cap.
This was the principal conclusion of ICS’s member national shipowner associations’ AGM held in Hong Kong last week.
Speaking from Hong Kong, ICS chairman, Esben Poulsson, said: “The
shipping industry fully supports the IMO global sulfur cap and the
positive environmental benefits it will bring, and is ready to accept
the significant increase in fuel costs that will result.
“But unless a number of serious issues are satisfactorily addressed by
governments within the next few months, the smooth flow of maritime
trade could be dangerously impeded. It is still far from certain that
sufficient quantities of compliant fuels will be available in every port
worldwide by 1st January, 2020. And in the absence of global standards
for many of the new blended fuels that oil refiners have promised, there
are some potentially serious safety issues due to the use of
incompatible bunkers.
”Governments, oil refiners and charterers of ships responsible for
meeting the cost of bunkers all need to understand that ships will need
to start purchasing compliant fuels several months in advance of 1st
January, 2020. But at the moment no one knows what types of fuel will be
available or at what price, specification or in what quantity.
“Unless everyone gets to grips with this quickly, we could be faced
with an unholy mess with ships and cargo being stuck in port,” he
stressed.
ICS emphasised that governments will need to make significant progress
on these issues at a critical IMO meeting in July regarding the
impending global sulfur cap, to which ICS – in co-operation with other
international industry associations – will be making a number of
detailed technical submissions to assist successful implementation of
what ICS describes as a regulatory game changer.
The AGM endorsed its support for the historic IMO agreement adopted in
April, 2018 on a comprehensive strategy to phase out international
shipping’s CO2 emissions completely. This includes targets to improve
the sector’s CO2 efficiency by at least 40% by 2030 and 70% by 2050, and
a very ambitious goal to cut the sector’s total GHG emissions by at
least 50% by 2050, regardless of growth in demand for maritime
transport.
Member associations agreed to contribute constructively to the
immediate development of additional IMO regulations that will start to
have a direct impact on further reducing international shipping’s CO2
emissions before 2023, in line with the new IMO strategy.
They agreed that ICS should come forward with detailed proposals before
the next round of IMO discussions in October on reducing GHG emissions
from shipping.
However, ICS members expressed serious disappointment at the apparent
intention of the European Union to press on with the implementation of a
regional CO2 reporting system at variance to the global system already
agreed by IMO, despite having given an undertaking to align the MRV
regulation with the global regime.
”We are still waiting to see the final recommendations from the
European Commission following a recent consultation,” said Poulsson.
“But the industry has made clear its total opposition to the publication
of data about individual ships using abstract operational efficiency
metrics that bear no relation to CO2 emissions in real life and which
will be used to penalise shipowners unfairly.
”Anything less than a full alignment with the IMO CO2 data collection
system will be seen as a sign of bad faith by many non-EU nations who
recently agreed to the IMO GHG reduction strategy, precisely to
discourage such unilateral measures which risk seriously distorting
maritime trade and global shipping markets,” he concluded.
In addition, the ICS AGM, which was hosted by the Hong Kong Shipowners’
Association, re-elected Poulsson (Singapore) as chairman for another
two years.
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