The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has made public its support on an IMO managed system to monitor and report on the level of CO2 emissions from ships globally.
Possible ways of implementing the system will form the body of discussion at the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) held on 31st March.
ICS has submitted a proposal to how this can be achieved, which will be examined by the committee.
On the 20th March, during a ICS-organised seminar for members of the Consultative Shipping Group (CSG) of maritime administrations, ICS made note of its support for a global system, provided it adhered to the following concepts: it would be simple to administer, is primarily based on fuel consumption and that the system itself will not be used in the development of a full blown Market Based Measure.
They also showed their recommendation for a ‘three phase’ approach to the development of the system, similar to that of the one proposed by the US.
During the Seminar, Simon Bennett, ICS director external relations, said “ICS believes that the question of whether IMO should eventually develop a mandatory system of energy indexing for existing ships – to which ICS is currently opposed – should be left open until after a mandatory CO2 emissions reporting system has been established, trialled, and the results evaluated.”
He added: “The priority of ICS is to assure the primacy of IMO as the industry’s global regulator. The successful development of a global system will require the support of all IMO Member States, including nations such as China. In order to make progress and discourage regional regulation, we think that the MEPC should initially focus on how information about emissions should be collected before launching into detailed discussions about efficiency indexing of ships, on which there is little global consensus. If they so wish, IMO Member States can always return to the question of ship indexing, once a CO2 monitoring system has been established.”
Mr Bennett remarked: “It is unfortunate that the debate has been complicated by the parallel proposal from the European Commission, now being considered by the European Parliament, for a unilateral regional system of CO2 reporting. In order that the systems can be compatible, it will be helpful if EU Member States could defer reaching agreement on any regional EU regulation until IMO has had time to make progress on a global system.”
