Response to the Environmental Audit Committee Report; “Reducing CO2 and other emissions from shipping”
1 June 2009
Tim Yeo has (Today Programme 1 June) accused the UK shipping industry of ignoring its impact on global warming. This is unfounded. In fact, it has led the way in industry debates with proposals for a cap-and-trade mechanism to encourage emission reductions.
The report from the Environmental Audit Committee raises a number of important issues and we entirely agree with the seriousness of the issue.
We are also very surprised that the Select Committee feels that little or no action has been taken by the UK Government with regard to the reduction of GHG emission from international shipping. The UK attends all meetings of the International Maritime Organization and has contributed to the debates and off-line work on GHG reduction. While there are areas in which industry would also wish to see more detailed input by the UK (and other governments), it is unfair to say that the Government’s position lacks coherence.
The Committee report’s own conclusions make clear that ‘tackling the climate change impacts of shipping is necessarily complex’ – not least because of the need, as identified by the committee, to ‘ensure that any regime that increases costs or imposes carbon limits on shipping does not act in isolation [as] doing so might lead to modal shift from sea to road or air’. We welcome the Committee’s explicit acknowledgement that this aspect merits deeper investigation.
The complexities are so enormous (big enough to warrant exclusion from Kyoto, the EU’s ETS and the UK’s Climate Change Act) that industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the answers on its own. Accordingly we are actively working with Government to unearth and then resolve all the possible options.
Specifically on the call for the Government to estimate the UK’s share of international shipping emissions, the Chamber made clear in its evidence to the Committee that this was “extremely difficult, with almost all of the options failing to provide an accurate representation”. In a proactive effort to find a solution, the Chamber of Shipping and WWF UK have already submitted a joint paper to the Committee on Climate Change offering suggestions on the most appropriate methodology and we look forward to working with the Government to refine these proposals.
We believe that international shipping emissions have to be treated as a separate entity – like a country. This will mean assessing all emissions outside the context of individual countries and addressing them on a global basis through IMO.
These are also good practical reasons why international shipping must not simply be shoe-horned into regional emissions regimes (such as the EU’s emissions trading scheme).
We can agree some recommendations readily, eg the call for a global regime (“involve as many nations as possible”) and actively support also a strong emphasis on R&D into new technologies. Other elements, such as the suggestion of differential port dues are not favoured and are more likely to become “just another tax” – especially as the Committee appears to have underestimated the complexities of measuring the environmental performance (as opposed to mere fuel burn) of any given ship.
The report concludes that “emissions from shipping cannot be allowed to grow uncontrolled”. The UK industry entirely shares the sense of urgency and accepts that it must take responsibility to reduce emissions as far as possible and will work actively on that. Much work has been done to improve the carbon efficiency of this, already the most carbon-friendly form of transport, and the industry is actively considering mechanisms to achieve global reductions. However, it is important to recall that shipping serves world trade – which is growing – and the demand for shipping is directly derived from the world’s demand for commodities to be carried.