In the European Shipowners’ seminar on CO2 reductions in the shipping industry one message was clear: in order to achieve CO2 reductions across the world merchant fleet, a combination of different measures is needed.

“In the seminar this week, they discussed with stakeholders and European decision-makrs different measures that enable to minimise the environmental impact of the shipping sector. In one analysis, the measures were divided in categories including the Technical and operational measures, Alternative fuels and Logistics related to the speed management of a vessel”, explained Tor Christian Sletner, the Chairman of ECSA’s Air Emissions Working Group and Director, Head of Environment of the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association.

Following the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) latest meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC71) and in view of the second meeting of the intersessional working group on reduction of GHG from ships in October 2017, European Shipowners this week organised the seminar on CO2 reduction in the shipping industry. In the event, shipowners presented their initiatives followed by a debate with stakeholders, including the Commission, maritime attachees, European Parliament’s representatives and NGOs such as Transport and Environment.

Also the Royal Belgian Shipowners association (RBSA) gave a presentation about the Maritime Industry Decarbonisation Council (MIDC) that they founded in 2016. The vision of the MIDC is to bridge the gap between the different stakeholders involved to ensure the development of an evidence-based policy on GHG that will enable the sector to reduce its CO2 emissions. The main goal of the MIDC is to bring much more structure in the debate on short-medium and long term technical measures for the decarbonisation of the shipping industry. Different options for existing ships and new-builds were discussed to bring insight to the policy-makers in a comprehensible way.

“We certainly aim to promote ambitious short, mid and long term global measures in line with IMO MEPC71 roadmap for the CO2 reductions from international shipping, and the Paris COP21 Agreement on climate change. We feel that the shipping industry is fully engaged in advancing the emission reduction agenda. We call for the EU Member States to proactively engage IMO’s global members that IMO continues to seriously address CO2 reduction for ships and adopts an IMO CO2 strategy as soon as possible, as a global solution is what our industry indeed needs”, concluded Sletner.