Monday’s approval follows similar green lights for airport expansion given by the previous centre-right government – and goes against the firm advice of the UK’s official climate change advisory body, as well as opposition from climate campaigners and East Londoners concerned about noise and carbon pollution.

The Climate Change Committee said last June that “there should be no net airport expansion across the UK” and “no airport expansions should proceed until a UK-wide capacity management framework is in place”. A spokesperson told Climate Home this remains the committee’s position.

But, approving the London City expansion, Labour ministers Angela Rayner and Louise Haigh said in a statement that the lifting of the cap from 6.5 million to 9 million passengers a year would bring more jobs and tourists to London and boost business productivity. They added that the expansion would not conflict with the government’s “Jet Zero Strategy” – to clean up aviation – nor prevent the UK from meeting its 2050 net zero target because the additional emissions would not be significant.

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Climate campaigners said the move highlights the flaws of the UK’s airport planning policy and its Jet Zero Strategy, which aims to cut emissions from aviation with cleaner fuels, carbon offsets and carbon dioxide (CO2) removal machines while passenger numbers increase by about half between 2018 and 2050.

Other bigger London airports – including Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted – are also considering expansion or seeking permission to expand.

For the London City decision, ministers relied heavily on advice from two planning inspectors – Claire Searson and Johanna Ayres. The inspectors concluded that, according to the Jet Zero Strategy, the emissions from airport expansions can be “accommodated within the planned trajectory for achieving net zero emissions by 2050” and therefore “our planning policy frameworks remain compatible with the UK’s climate change obligations”.

The Jet Zero Strategy was published by the last Conservative government in July 2022. It aims to reach net zero in the aviation sector by 2050 – a goal it says is “hugely challenging”.

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Alethia Warrington, a climate campaigner at an NGO called Possible, told Climate Home the UK was “ahead of the curve” compared to other countries in setting this target but that its projections for passenger growth were “incredibly dangerous”. Possible is challenging the strategy in court. Greenpeace campaigner Paul Morozzo said the strategy was built on “false hope”.

The plan does not include any measures to limit the number of flights or the capacity of airports, allowing planning inspectors and ministers to conclude that airport expansions are not counter to the strategy.

Instead, it plans to achieve just under half of the sector’s emissions reductions by buying carbon offsets. But many carbon offsets – where the buyer pays someone else to reduce emissions on their behalf – have been found not to deliver the emissions savings they claim.

The Jet Zero Strategy plans to get about a quarter of the emissions cuts needed from fuel efficiency improvements, another quarter from “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) and a small amount from zero-emission aircraft.

Many airlines are buying more fuel-efficient aircraft, shaving a chunk off their planet-heating pollution. But the viability and sustainability of SAFs has been challenged by campaigners, regulators and even airline executives.

Currently, the only non-fossil fuel commercially available for planes is made from biomass, turning crops like corn, soy and oil palm, or used cooking oil, into jet fuel.

But there is nowhere near enough of this being produced to meet demand. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said in December “there isn’t enough cooking oil in the world to power more than one day’s aviation”. As a result, SAF is currently more than four times as expensive as regular oil-based jet fuel.

Biofuels also often compete with food crops, worsening hunger and encouraging deforestation. The UK’s advertising regulator recently ruled that airline Virgin Atlantic should not have told customers it flew a plane on “100% sustainable aviation fuel” because it gave the misleading impression that the fuel was entirely green.

Andrew Symes is the CEO of a company called OXCCU which has just started producing tiny test quantities of SAF in a container next to Oxford Airport in England. Earlier this month, he told journalists visiting the site that SAFs based on biofuel alone would not be sufficient, so his company is developing a SAF that mixes carbon dioxide and green hydrogen.

OXCCU CEO Andrew Symes holds up his company’s catalyst and SAF at its new test plant in Oxford (Photo: OXCCU)

But Symes acknowledged that the fuel is “not perfect”, as the CO2 will be bought from industry – and burning it will damage the planet. But, he said, it still offers a “huge emission saving” compared to conventional jet fuel, and could be made carbon neutral by capturing the emitted CO2 from the atmosphere.

Producing it in this carbon-neutral way, however, would require huge numbers of CO2 removal machines, as well as solar panels and wind turbines to produce the renewable electricity needed to make green hydrogen, he noted.

He predicted this kind of fuel would be used in planes in small quantities towards the end of the decade and could be scaled up from there. But Possible’s Warrington disputed that assertion.

“The idea that we can magic up this gigantic renewable capacity to produce e-fuel so a small group of wealthy frequent flyers never have to take the train – it’s just not doable,” she said. Warrington predicted it would be a “fairly sizable number of decades” before zero-carbon flights are common.

Even if all the emissions reduction measures outlined in the UK Jet Zero Strategy’s high-ambition scenario are successful, it still envisions aviation producing 19 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year in 2050 – about half the current level.

It plans to address these left-over emissions through CO2 removals, but Warrington is sceptical. “There’s no payment mechanism for this. It would be horrendously expensive. It would be extremely resource-intensive,” she said. “It just doesn’t stack up at all.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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The report, overseen by a steering committee of 32 governments and published by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), found that a levy would do less damage to the global economy than a standard for cleaner fuels and, if designed right, could help reduce global economic inequality.

Marshall Islands shipping negotiator Albon Ishoda said the analysis showed that a direct levy on emissions “is the fastest, cheapest and most equitable way” to decarbonise shipping, a sector that accounts for 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution.

A levy would force ship owners to pay for every tonne of greenhouse gases their vessels emit, making the use of more-polluting fuels – like today’s oil-based bunker fuel – more expensive. It would incentive the use of lower-emitting fuels like ammonia, biofuels, methanol and hydrogen.

Ishoda said he now expects to see countries coalesce around an emissions levy, adding that “alternatives such as relying solely on a fuel standard could be up to twice as damaging for global GDP by 2050, with the poorest countries hit hardest”.

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But written comments on the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report show that Brazil, Argentina and China disputed its findings. Latin American nations have long led opposition to an emissions levy, fearing it will harm their trade-dependent economies.

Argentinian officials noted that they were “surprised” at the conclusion that levies would lead to less economic damage in the long term while Brazil wrote that this was “nonsensical”.

Argentina said it was “policy-prescriptive and therefore unacceptable” for the report to suggest that disbursing the revenues would help developing countries more than developed ones, while China argued this aspect should not have been factored in as “the impact assessment should focus on the impact of the measure, rather than the impact after revenue distribution”.

Levy or fuel standard?

Governments have already agreed to put a price on shipping emissions as a way to reach net zero “by or around, i.e. close to 2050”. But they have not settled on exactly how to do that, instead tasking experts to study the impacts of various proposals.

One proposal – which most countries support – is a fuel standard that would see ship owners pay for emissions only above a certain level. Owners of ships emitting below this level could potentially sell licenses to those emitting above it, enabling them to continue polluting. This would incentivise shipowners to use cleaner fuels or to save fuel by sailing slower.

Some countries – like the Pacific island states and many European nations – want to combine this fuel standard with a levy, where ship owners would have to pay varying amounts based on their vessels’ total annual greenhouse gas emissions.

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Under the direction of governments, experts from UNCTAD, the World Maritime University, DNV and Starcrest Consulting Group produced four separate reports, modelling dozens of different scenarios.

UNCTAD found that any emissions-cutting scenario would push up the cost of shipping, damaging the global economy by around 0.1-0.2% by 2050. It did not model the economic benefits of how the measures would help curb climate change.

Comparing a levy to a fuel standard, the UNCTAD report concluded that “in the long run (2050), scenarios that envisage a levy have a smaller impact” on economic growth.

University College of London academic Tristan Smith, who worked on the paper, explained that the levies modelled lead to greater subsidies for zero-emission fuels and higher incentives for fuel efficiency than the proposed fuel standard. He told Climate Home that this lowers the cost of the transition and therefore the damage to economic growth.

Fairer and faster?

The report found that a fuel standard without a levy would damage the economies of developing countries – particularly small islands (SIDs) and least developed countries (LDCs) – more than developed countries because any increase in shipping costs hits the poorest hardest.

A high emissions levy of $150-300 per tonne of CO2 equivalent would be fairer, it found, broadly damaging developing countries’ economies less than developed ones, assuming that the revenues were distributed to poorer nations. Such a levy would actually boost the economies of most LDCs, it found, and damage SIDs less than the alternatives.

Consultants from Starcrest interviewed representatives of governments and business in various countries and heard concerns that economies exporting cheap, bulky goods over long distances would be badly hit by an increase in the cost of shipping. It cited Tonga’s exports of the medicinal kava plant and the US’s exports of wood chips as examples.

If green measures drive ships to slow down to save fuel, then countries that rely on exporting perishable goods to faraway destinations would suffer, Starcrest was told. Argentina’s beef and Chile’s cherry industries could be vulnerable.

As first airline drops goal, are aviation’s 2030 targets achievable without carbon offsets?

University of Sao Paulo economist Paula Pereda told Climate Home that a levy would “quickly reduce emissions”, but warned against its “potential regressive impacts, which more negatively affect poorer countries and poorer families in all countries”.

While revenue redistribution could help tackle this unfairness, it could also increase emissions from the compensated households and increase the complexity of the mechanism, she added.

“Balancing environmental benefits with social equity remains a key challenge in the implementation of carbon tax policies,” she said.

Governments will debate whether to pursue a levy or fuel standard at the next set of IMO talks in London, starting on September 30. They are aiming to have a measure in place by 2027, which means they will need to agree it at talks in April 2025.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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In a statement, Air New Zealand’s CEO Greg Foran said that because of delays to the delivery of more fuel-efficient aircraft and because “so many levers needed to meet the target are outside our control”, the airline was dropping its target and withdrawing from the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an influential non-governmental arbiter of corporate climate targets.

As several airlines have made similar targets for 2030 or 2035, the move has cast doubt on whether they can meet them. It has also raised difficult questions about the role of carbon offsets in decarbonising aviation, a sector that accounts for an estimated 2-3% of global emissions.

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Sustainability consultant and offset developer Chris Hocknell told Climate Home that Air New Zealand’s decision to leave SBTi shows that the body’s rules, particularly around offsets, are too harsh. He accused SBTi of “environmental zealotry”, a “lack of realism” and of not engaging with businesses trying to reduce their emissions.

But Thomas Day, a researcher at the New Climate Institute, said weakening SBTi’s rules to accommodate companies that are not aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C would “completely defeat the purpose of 1.5C validations”.

Dutch airline KLM has a similar target to the one Air New Zealand has just abandoned, which it plans to meet with more efficient aircraft and cleaner fuels. Their spokesperson told Climate Home that they “are sticking to that [target]” but “at the same time, we recognise that it is not easy to decarbonise aviation”.

While Air New Zealand’s Foran partly blamed delays to the delivery of more fuel-efficient aircraft for dropping the target, the KLM spokesperson said their deliveries of new aircraft which consume about a quarter less fuel per passenger-kilometre are “currently more or less on schedule”.

But, the spokesperson said, “we recognise the picture Air New Zealand paints regarding the availability and pricing of alternative jet fuel” and “would like to see even more being done from governments to encourage production”.

Not enough biofuels

While fuel-efficiency can shave a chunk off a plane’s emissions, the only way to fly a plane without producing emissions is to stop using fossil fuels to power them.

Currently, the only non-fossil-based fuel commercially available is made from biofuels, turning crops like corn, soy and oil palm or used cooking oil into jet fuel.

But there is not enough of this being produced to meet demand and, as a result, it is currently more than four times as expensive as regular oil-based jet fuel.

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Jonathan Lewis, transport lead at the Clean Air Task Force, told Climate Home that he doubts whether there will ever be enough of these biofuels produced to power the world’s planes. A recent report he co-authored found aviation will need about 40% more energy in 2030 than all the world’s biofuels will be able to supply.

It’s a concern shared by the CEO of RyanAir Michael O’Leary. He told the Guardian in December: ” I don’t see where we will get the supply in the volumes we need. You want everybody running around collecting fucking cooking oil? There isn’t enough cooking oil in the world to power more than one day’s aviation.”

Even if the world could produce enough biofuels, that is likely to come with bad environmental and social side-effects, as the growing of crops to fuel planes displaces crops for food and encourages the chopping down of forests.

Other options for cleanly powering planes are fuels based on green hydrogen and ammonia. But these fuels are in early stages of development and would require big changes to airport infrastructure and, for hydrogen, aircraft design.

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Airlines’ climate targets are all based on emissions per passenger and per kilometre so flying less won’t help them meet them, but it will reduce their and the world’s total emissions.

No airline has said it will reduce flights for climate reasons, so any pressure on that is likely to come from consumers and governments. France recently banned some short-haul domestic flights to howls of protest from the airline industry.

Offsets to fill the gap?

Another way for airlines to meet their climate targets is for them to buy carbon offsets. Lewis said that that was likely to be “a necessary part of decarbonising the aviation sector”.

While many airlines have bought offsets whose claims of emissions reduction are highly questionable, initiatives like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market are trying to improve the industry’s integrity.

But on the same day Air New Zealand announced it was leaving, the SBTi released the results of a consultation on the use of carbon offsets to meet climate targets.

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It found that the evidence it had reviewed “suggests that various types of carbon credits are ineffective” and “there could be clear risks to corporate use of carbon credits for the purpose of offsetting”.

This review, published by SBTi’s technical experts, struck a very different note to an earlier statement put out in April by the body’s board which said offsets “could function as an additional tool to tackle climate change” and “consequently, SBTi has decided to extend their use”.

That statement by the board prompted a revolt by staff, many of whom called on CEO Luiz Amaral to resign, which he did in July citing personal reasons.

Too strict or lax?

Hocknell accused SBTi’s technical experts of a “very puritanical approach” and said he hoped that SBTi’s pro-offsets elements won out in what he predicted would be a “big, big fight”.

Hundreds of companies have dropped out of SBTi after failing to follow through on a promise to set sufficiently ambitious climate targets. “If I get my crystal ball out, you’ll see hundreds more companies drop this before the end of the year,” said Hocknell.

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But New Climate Institute’s Thomas Day, who has accused SBTi of being too lax, told Climate Home “the purpose of the SBTi is to support the transformation of sectors and to offer a platform for companies who commit to this transformation.”

“It would completely defeat the purpose of 1.5C validations if the rules would be redefined to accommodate companies who are not willing or able to do so,” he added.

“If the technologies do not yet exist to put the aviation or oil and gas sectors on a 1.5C-aligned trajectory, then we need to recognise this and consider as a society how to address this, rather than moving the goalposts to pretend that everyone is on track,” Day said.

Pedro Martins Barata, the Environmental Defense Fund’s carbon markets lead, told Climate Home there were two ways of looking at Air New Zealand’s announcement.

One is that the airline set a target without measuring the consequences and “should get a reputational bad rap”. The other is that “in a voluntary system you need to walk players through how to increase their ambition over time and allow flexibility, or risk alienating corporate players and essentially becoming irrelevant in the process”.

“Are we better served by a small number of incredibly ambitious companies that can commit to far-reaching standards?” he asked, “or by having a much broader movement that can significantly impact climate change?”

“If you’re in the second camp,” he said, “you’d want Air New Zealand to do something even by purchasing good carbon credits, rather than simply walk away from it all.”

This article originally said incorrectly that Denmark had banned some short-haul flights.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Matteo Civillini)

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“Overcapacity”, a geeky economic term, has recently become the new buzzword for international discussion around China’s solar and electric vehicle industries. It is also becoming one of the thorniest issues in China’s relations with other major economies.

Notably, the word was mentioned five times in the G7 Leaders Communiqué released last week, with the G7 countries framing it collectively as a global challenge.

It is a debate that was initially sparked by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her April visit to Beijing. According to her, China’s cleantech industry has excess capacities that cannot be absorbed domestically, leading to exports at depressed prices. And she stressed that this should be a concern not only for the US, but also for Europe and other emerging markets.

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China strongly disagreed with this claim, while Yellen’s concern resonated in the EU, which has long focused on China’s market dominance. In short, there is an overcapacity of “overcapacities”, with neither side finding identical terms of reference. But as this debate is a harbinger of how climate solutions and political agendas will interweave, it’s worth parsing out some lessons for each side, on their own terms.

The US’ “overcapacity” claim as presented by Yellen is a non-starter in China.

China’s clean energy industry is an important point of pride internationally and a source of legitimacy domestically for Beijing. From that perspective countering the “overcapacity” claim is both emotionally and strategically important.

Strategically, this claim is being used to justify trade measures and tariffs against China’s clean energy products. Emotionally, the cleantech industry is a modern-day success story of China’s entrepreneurship and innovation. In China’s public discourse, the US “overcapacity” claims lands as a rejection of that success.

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The result is a political debate in which – by design – no side can convince the other. And the lesson? This posturing is at odds with US-China climate diplomacy as we’ve known it to function in the past. Whatever objectives this approach serves, it does not include closer climate collaboration between the US and China, even as multilateral climate action at the UN level still requires them to take action in concert.

In China, discussion on “overcapacity” emerged from an ongoing conversation about how to manage investment hype. And the answer lies on the demand side.

For investors inside China at a time of challenging economics, few industries are as attractive as the clean energy industry. And business leaders have focused on the risks of hot money and breakneck expansion of clean energy manufacturing capacity for some time now, particularly in the solar industry.

This was probably the origin of “overcapacity”. But in China, this has been a familiar, almost perennial discussion of investment and industrial cycles. While the US argument equates exports to overcapacity, Chinese companies argue that it is demand that determines overcapacity, and they make investment and expansion decisions based on projections of both domestic and global demand.

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That said, the size of China’s domestic market means it will remain the “base” for Chinese manufacturers. In the overseas market, the “overcapacity” claim underscores the complexity and uncertainties Chinese companies face.

For Chinese policymakers, one obvious response to the new market dynamics should be taking domestic demand to new levels. That means addressing lingering questions for China’s renewable energy future – namely, how to resolve the impact of coal. China’s power market was designed for a system dependent on coal, but it needs reform to allow wind and solar to take the central role. Injecting new political momentum to accelerate the reform will be key.

The EU has long been concerned about China’s market dominance, and the “overcapacity” debate is pushing it to decide its role in this trilateral trade and climate dynamic.

Even before this debate erupted, the EU had already begun, subtly, to diversify supply chains and build its own industrial strength, reducing dependence on Chinese products. Last week, the EU announced a maximum tariff of 38% on imported Chinese-made electric vehicles, concluding that Chinese EV makers are benefiting from “unfair subsidies”.

At this stage, it’s still unclear if this is the end of the EU’s low-key approach to date. Cultivating an EU-based clean industry hub without compromising the global response to climate change is a challenge, especially as the EU positions itself as a climate leader.

Entering the fray of US-China tension only makes this feat more complex, especially given uncertainties on the US end in an election year. How the EU approaches this climate and trade nexus will ultimately shape the trilateral dynamic among the world’s three largest carbon emitters in the coming years.

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For China, where relations with the EU and other countries are concerned, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at the hidden messages in the “overcapacity” debate. Other countries want more than just Chinese products.

Climate leadership is not a buyer-seller relationship, but one between partners who want solutions that create local jobs, develop opportunities, and enable native development of a sustainable future.

China should see its role in the global clean transition as more than a manufacturing hub. The transition requires tools, technology, finance and know-how, and China has much to offer. It is time for China to think more creatively about how to leverage its industrial advantages to provide the solutions with which the world is currently under-supplied.

The post Lessons from trade tensions targeting “overcapacity” in China’s cleantech industry appeared first on Climate Home News.

With rich countries failing to deliver promised amounts of their taxpayers’ money to help developing countries tackle warming, global attention has turned to so-called “innovative” sources of climate finance – like levies on ships, planes or fossil fuel firms – to make up the shortfall.

But at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the United Nations’ shipping arm, governments have made clear they want the bulk of the revenue from a shipping emissions levy to go towards making it cheaper and easier for companies to put clean fuel in their vessels.

Sitting in the 7th-floor boardroom of the IMO’s riverside London headquarters, Arsenio Dominguez, the IMO’s new head, said “we need to focus on shipping as a sector, as that is what we regulate and that’s where we need to focus the efforts”.

IMO secretary general Arsenio Dominguez (March 18/IMO)

Asked if the money could go into a new UN fund to repair and reduce loss and damage from climate change, Dominguez told Climate Home: “That’s another UN agency – we have no remit there.” The fund, set up under UN climate change talks, is set to be hosted by the World Bank.

While conversations are at an early stage, Dominguez’s view is broadly echoed by the shipping industry – as well as by most governments that have so far submitted formal proposals at the IMO, although Pacific nations want some of the funds to be used outside of shipping.

Loss and damage fund board member Avinash Persaud, from Barbados, urged finance and environment ministers to intervene at the IMO to secure a share of any future shipping levy for addressing the harm caused by worsening extreme weather and rising seas.

Big-emitting sector

As it moves goods around the world, the international shipping industry emits a similar amount of greenhouse gases to Germany but has lagged behind when it comes to setting targets to reduce that pollution.

In July last year, governments at the IMO agreed to aim for net zero emissions in the sector “by or around, i.e. close to 2050” – with interim targets for 2030 and 2040.

At the same time, they agreed to look into putting a price on the industry’s emissions. On Monday, Dominguez said he was confident such a levy would be agreed by this time next year, although the details are still to be fought over.

While nations are split on how high the charge should be – with a group of island nations arguing for the highest tax of $150 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions – submissions from governments, industry and campaign groups all specify that the funds should be used mainly for cleaning up shipping.

Climate protesters dressed as mermaids lie on the floor at an IMO drinks reception last year (Photo credit: Guy Reece)

Kept in house?

A joint submission from the European Union, South Korea, the International Chamber of Shipping, the Environmental Defense Fund and others says a portion of the money should go to cleaning up shipping through investments, research funding and rewards for using clean fuels. 

The money should also address “disproportionate negative impacts” of the transition to clean shipping through training, technical advice and finance for green investments, it adds. An impact assessment is currently being carried out by experts under the guidance of the IMO.

Another joint submission from eight Pacific nations and Belize says the funds should be collected and spent using the principle of “the polluter pays”. That would require the shipping industry as the polluter to stop burning planet-heating fossil fuels “whilst making reparation for the impact on the environment, including people and communities”, the submission specifies.

A shipping negotiator from the climate-threatened Marshall Islands, Albon Ishoda, said the money should be “reinvested in the shipping industry to trigger research, development and deployment into zero-emission maritime technologies and to address climate mitigation efforts”, as well as in “an equitable transition” for small islands and the world’s poorest countries.

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A Pacific negotiator, who was not authorised to speak to the media, told Climate Home that this transition funding should go to projects both in and outside of the shipping sector according to “the priority needs of the climate most vulnerable”.

A Canadian proposal says each ship’s operator should decide, within certain limits, where the money it pays should go.

International climate finance sought

Loss and damage expert Persaud said shipping industry executives – and even maritime ministers – could not be expected to support a plan to spend money raised from the sector outside the industry. “It’s almost beyond their remit,” he said.

Rather, finance and environment ministers “would need to be part of the push to get the world’s most significant economic system – the trading system – to contribute to the loss and damage caused by current and past emissions in the production, consumption and transportation of goods”, he added.

Friederike Roder from Global Citizen, an anti-poverty campaign group, agreed it is “not surprising” that the IMO and the shipping sector “are trying to retain the proceeds for themselves”. But, she said, the polluter pays principle should apply more broadly to at least part of the proceeds raised from a shipping emissions levy.

Aoife O’Leary, head of shipping-focused environmental think-tank Opportunity Green, also called for some of the money to be spent on protection from climate impacts, such as projects to help flood-hit communities in Bangladesh or build sea walls on Pacific islands.

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A global finance summit in Paris last year, attended by about 50 heads of state, came to a similar conclusion and led to the launch of a taskforce by France and Kenya to explore “innovative sources” of climate finance ahead of the Cop30 climate summit in late 2025.

Danish climate minister Dan Jorgensen, meanwhile, has called a shipping tax “a potential global source” of “international climate finance”.  

At the IMO, a working group of government shipping negotiators has been formed to hammer out how to raise and spend the money, with a decision expected by this time next year.

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We must dramatically increase fossil fuel-free transport to avert a deepening climate crisis.

Globally, transportation causes over a fifth of all carbon emissions and at the current growth rate, this will rise to two-fifths within a decade.

And yet, a concrete target for clean transport is absent from the upcoming UN climate summit, Cop28, in Dubai.

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It is time the EU took the driver’s seat – both by cleaning up its own transportation system and leading the push at Cop28 to get all countries to shift away from fossil-fuel powered vehicles. 

Within Europe, road transport accounts for almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions and is increasing.

Heavy-duty vehicles (trucks, vans and buses) are responsible for 28% of those emissions, despite only accounting for 2% of vehicles on the road.

Vehicle emission targets

Next week’s EU Council of Environment Ministers will discuss new emission targets for such vehicles as well as Europe’s negotiating objectives for the upcoming UN climate conference in Dubai.

It will be a first test for the new EU Commissioner for Climate, Maroš Šefčovič, to safeguard an ambitious EU Green Deal as currently the transport sector is a major stumbling block of the EU’s climate and zero pollution objectives for 2030 and 2050.    

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Furthermore, a concrete global goal to significantly lower the use of fossil fuels for the transportation sector is lacking in the international climate negotiations.    

The Council should support a target on doubling the share of fossil-fuel free transport by 2030. To put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C, a multi-solutions mobility strategy is needed; more efficiency in vehicles and systems, a shift to public transport, cycling and innovative urban planning to avoid short rides in the first place, and more electrification.

Going electric

There are three approaches to achieve such ambition:    

First, all global sales of new vehicles need to be electric for buses and two- and three-wheelers by 2030, cars by 2035, and trucks by no later than 2040.

Translating this to the EU means it would need to end the sale of all new trucks and buses with combustion engines by 2035 to reach its own target of climate neutrality by 2050, as heavy-duty vehicles have an average life span of 15 – 18 years.  

The proposal discussed at the upcoming EU Environment Council sets out a CO2 emission reduction target for trucks of 45% by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels) and a 90% reduction for 2040.

These emission targets are significant but fall short of what is needed to put the heavy-duty sector on track with Europe’s climate commitments.

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The European Parliament, as co-legislator, can spearhead a more ambitious clean vehicle amendment later in the year.

Promote alternatives to cars

Second, governments need to bend the curve on the growth of vehicle travel in this decade, by moving more trips to electric public transport, walking, biking, and micro-mobility by 2030.

This will require constructing bicycle networks, dramatically scaling up the quality and provision of public transport and smarter urban planning.

While several EU countries are leading on many of these points, Europe could still do better.

With the EU’s motorization rate growing by 18% between 2010-2020, the car is still often the default option. Metro rails and electric buses emit one-fifth the carbon of a private car while bicycling is inherently fossil fuel free, next to many other benefits such as road safety and a low-cost mode of transportation.

Decarbonising electricity

Third, countries also need to enhance these efforts by tripling renewable energy by 2030 and decarbonising the electricity grid which transport will increasingly rely upon. 

Transport emissions are veering alarmingly off course, demanding immediate action at Cop28, with the EU leading the way by setting an ambitious goal for negotiators in Dubai.

Simultaneously, Europe must intensify its efforts on the home front, aligning its domestic agenda with its climate objectives. The EU Environmental Council must seize this opportunity to act on both fronts. 

Stientje van Veldhoven is vice-president of World Resources Institute and a former minister and state secretary for the environment and infrastructure of the Netherlands 

The post The EU must take the driver’s seat in fossil fuel-free transport appeared first on Climate Home News.

LNG is a fossil fuel whose use is not consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5C temperature goal. It consists primarily of methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas (GHG), which has climate impacts over 80 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Methane leaks into the atmosphere across the full production lifecycle of LNG, and once on the ships, the unburned gas escapes from the smokestacks into the air.

Despite the devastating frontloaded climate impact of methane, to date policymakers have been slow to address its use in regulation, and public awareness of the issue is low. This gives cruise companies the latitude to invest in LNG as an alternative fuel – and they have done so with gusto.   

Why do cruise companies love LNG? 

There are some benefits to LNG on paper: in the short term it reduces air pollution and CO2 emissions when burned, compared to standard shipping fuel. This has led to some of the world’s biggest cruise companies (including Carnival Corporation & plc and MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean Group) to portray their cruises as sustainable, and their newest ships “clean”, “green” and “eco-friendly”.

Across the industry, company webpages are littered with references to LNG superimposed on images of idyllic blue seas, thriving coral reefs, and green forests. Most of us aren’t specialists in the climate impacts of differing fuel compositions, and it’s easy to be taken in.  

But the reality is that these adverts are a very effective smokescreen for the fact that the true climate effect of LNG is likely worse than if the companies had stuck with dirty heavy marine fuel oil.  

Calling out cruise companies’ ‘green’ claims  

With recent poll data demonstrating that environmentally friendly cruise line policies mattered to 77% of respondents, and US research relating to consumer goods showing a link between products making green claims and higher sales growth, it’s clear that sustainability sells.

We don’t think it’s right that some of the biggest companies in the world should be able to profit from green claims that don’t stack up. 

That’s why at Opportunity Green we’re filing complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK about the worst advertising we’ve seen. This includes cruise companies claiming that fossil-LNG is “a breakthrough green technology”, “among the cleanest fuels in the world”, and that it is a milestone on the “journey to zero emissions operations”. 

It is not ok to mislead consumers about the real climate impact of LNG. And in the absence of effective regulation of methane emissions in the shipping sector, we want companies and their investors to see that LNG is not part of a future-proof business model.  

Instead, forward-looking companies must be investing in true zero emissions solutions such as wind propulsion, electrification and e-fuels made from renewable energy such as methanol, ammonia or hydrogen to deal with climate transition risk. 

Truly decarbonising the cruise sector won’t be easy, but these companies have the market share to make a difference – and the first mover advantage could be significant. It might even be ‘green’.  

For more information about how cruise companies are is trying to gaslight the public into believing that LNG is a climate solution, read the full report, (UN)sustainable from ship to shore.  

Carly Hicks is legal director at Opportunity Green. 

The post The cruise industry says LNG is a climate solution. It’s not appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate Home identified ten oil and gas company lobbyists and over 50 employees of the shipping industry on the participant list of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) talks, which the media and public were barred from.

Shipping uses the dirtiest part of a barrel of oil to fuel its vessels and oil companies are likely to struggle to sell that part elsewhere if the industry moves to cleaner fuels based on green hydrogen.

Lack of transparency

Aoife O’Leary is the director of the Sasha Coalition and was among the 44-strong delegation of climate campaigners at the talks, which took place in London at the end of June.

Under record heatwave, US and China “unstick” climate talks

She said that the IMO, the UN’s shipping arm, “violates international standards on transparency in environmental decision making”.

“There are too few climate vulnerable countries participating in the room due to resource limitations while other delegations are overloaded with industry representatives,” said O’Leary.

The cost of attending several weeks of talks in London is too much for many poorer, smaller and more distant governments.

O’Leary said that there are “many interests looking not to fuels that can solve the climate crisis, but rather to expand their sales of fossil fuels by pushing gas as a ‘transition fuel’ for shipping”.

Rasmus Bjerring Larsen is a policy officer at Green Transition Denmark who was at the talks. He told Climate Home: “Industry involvement at the IMO is overwhelming, particularly from big oil and ship owners. Meanwhile civil society and especially media representation is marginal.”

Crunch talks

The week-long meeting, known as the inter-sessional working group, was the behind-closed-doors precursor to a more public week of government discussions about shipping’s climate strategy.

At stake were the questions of what net zero target to set for the industry and whether to set interim 2030 and 2040 targets and consider a tax on ships’ emissions. The shipping industry contributes 3% of global emissions – more than Japan.

Pacific “mixed feelings” after compromise on shipping’s climate goals

At the end of the two weeks, governments agreed to target net zero “by or around, ie close to 2050” and cut emissions by 20% by 2030 and 70% by 2040, compared to 2008 levels.

Lobbyists on the guestlist

Governments bring delegations to the meeting, usually made up of government staff but sometimes including corporate lobbyists or climate campaigners.

Several nations brought lobbyists from oil and gas companies based in their countries. Norway’s delegation included two advisers from Equinor, that of Canada had a regulatory affairs analyst from Irving Oil, and Indonesia brought someone from Pertamina.

The Swiss delegation featured no government employees. Its only representative was Claudio Abbate, the vice-president for government affairs of the Swiss-headquartered Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), which is investing in ships powered by fossil gas.

EU and Argentina strike gas, hydrogen & renewables deal

MSC’s biggest competitors were also there. CMA CGM was a guest of the French government, Cosco of the Chinese delegation and Maersk – the most climate-ambitious container shipping company – was part of the Danish delegation.

A host of governments, including Japan, Greece and Germany, brought representatives of their domestic shipping industry trade associations.

The Cook Islands was represented by an Englishman called Ian Finley, who has worked for a trade association representing the chemical shipping industry.

Observer groups

Other industry representatives attended as observers. Shell lobbyist Alex Revans, ExxonMobil’s Christophe Pouts and Saudi Aramco scientist Hassan Alzain were part of the delegation from the oil industry’s environmental lobby group Ipieca.

At the meeting, Ipieca argued in a written submission that the term “lower [greenhouse gas] emissions energies” should be used instead of stricter terms such as “zero-emission fuels”.

Australia will update the ‘fantasy’ net zero plan it inherited

They added that carbon offsets from outside the shipping sector should be allowed to contribute to industry’s emissions targets.

As at previous shipping talks, Brazil’s delegation included lobbyists from Brazilian mining company Vale.

Brazil was the strongest opponent of a tax on shipping emissions, labelling it a “tax on distance”. Such a tax is likely to harm the competitiveness of Vale’s metal exports to distant markets like China.

Cruise lines were represented by their CLIA association, which included chief Carnival lobbyist Anna Ziou. While container shipping companies have widely varying levels of support for the clean transition, cruise shipping companies are more consistently resistant to green fuel.

Kerry rejects “climate reparations” but praises loss and damage fund

The International Chamber of Shipping, which represents the entire industry, brought an eight-strong delegation and trade associations representing smaller niches of the industry were represented too.

Opaque talks

These talks were closed to the media and to the public. The talks the following week were partly open to the media but were not live-streamed for the public to watch like the UN climate talks are.

Even where journalists are allowed into talks, they are not allowed to name individual government speakers without their permission – a restriction that does not govern other UN talks.

With corporate climate cheats on the chopping block, net zero is growing up

Tristan Smith attended the talks for the trade association IMarEST. He told Climate Home that “sometimes it can be hard to know how industry’s preference affects outcomes”.

But, he said that the “IMO’s processes need the expertise and direct input of industry stakeholders for the design of effective policy. It would be odd to try and operate without this.”

Larsen said that “technical knowledge from industry can be valuable” but “stricter conflict-of-interest safeguards and better representation of climate vulnerable countries, marginalized groups and media are key for the IMO to drive a fair and transparent process.”

He added: “It is crucial to set clear boundaries for when and how technical contributions from industry should be made use of, and when the floor should be reserved for state representatives and civil society.”

Reponding to O’Leary’s criticism, an IMO spokesperson said that a fund had been created to support delegates from developing countries, especially small islands and least developed countries, to attend meetings. They said the fund allowed 12 people to attend the talks, half of them from Pacific islands.

The spokesperson added that the IMO had trialled hybrid participation, allowing delegates to talk to the meeting room remotely.

Larsen’s comments were added on July 20

The post Dozens of oil & industry lobbyists attended secretive shipping emissions talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

A global renewables target has been positioned as a centerpiece of the climate talks. The EU was among the first to get behind it in principle and will discuss at their Council meeting.

But there is an unexpected twist. The EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, has asked the EU’s council, which represents member states, to officially approve a negotiation mandate for a global renewables target.

‘Historic milestone’: Ecuador nears vote to keep Amazon oil on the ground

But their ambition falls short. Globally, we need to reach a yearly installment of, on average, at least 1.5 Terawatt (TW) renewable energy from 2030 onwards to be in line with the Paris Agreement. That’s clear from our own analysis and that of Climate Analytics.

 However, the EUs internal documents only suggest yearly deployment rates which lands at below 1 TW. Even the UAE Cop28 President Sultan Al Jaber has put forward more ambitious proposals.

Why is the EUs global renewable ambition even lower than what a petro state has put forward?  If the EU wants to be a renewable energy champion it needs to significantly up their game.

Why a target is crucial

Cop28 represents a pivotal moment in stopping the world warming by more than 1.5 degrees celsius through the Global Stocktake, a unique mechanism under the Paris Agreement to assess progress and to correct course.

If we are honest, we already know we are not doing enough. What matters is what comes next: Fossil fuels cause three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Pacific “mixed feelings” after compromise on shipping’s climate goals

If this is the Cop to “course correct”, no outcome will be credible without a centerpiece decision to phase out all fossil fuels –  coal, oil, and gas  – while simultaneously powering up renewables.

A global renewable target is indispensable for guiding the entire energy transition. It provides governments with a benchmark for renewable deployment, informing decisions regarding planning permission, land use, grid connections, and auctions.

Additionally, the target guides governments on how to integrate renewable power effectively, considering factors like grid investments, flexibility, storage requirements, and market design changes.

In the coming decade, much of the newly added renewable electricity capacity will meet the growing electricity demand rather than replacing coal and gas generation.

What a target must entail

Science provides a clear framework for action. By 2050, we must completely eliminate fossil fuels to stay within the 1.5-degree carbon budget. This necessitates a rapid phase-out this decade, resulting in a 43% reduction in emissions by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.

Formulating a renewable energy target might be more complex. But its crucial and we must get it right.

The International Energy Association’s (IEA) scenarios provide a useful starting point. For achieving a 1.5C-aligned renewable energy deployment, the IEA predicts a peak installation of 1.2TW per year in the 2030s.

UAE’s al Jaber says Cop28 will fast-track phase down of fossil fuels

But this scenario has two significant flaws. First, the 1.2TW scenario assumes unrealistic utilisation of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the energy sector.

CCS has long been a deceptive tool of the fossil fuel industry, with limited emissions-cutting potential and exorbitant costs.

A recent Climate Analytics study estimates the emission-cutting contribution of CCS to be 0.1% by 2030. It is only viable in hard-to-abate sectors such as steel production, not energy.

Secondly, the IEA scenario envisions an unsustainable and unattainable growth of biomass. By excluding unrealistic amounts of biomass and CCS, a more realistic estimate for renewable deployment in the 2030s is 1.5 Terawatt.

In fact, the above highlighted Climate Analytics analysis also lands at this number. So there is a real question why the EU is locking itself into a low ambition Renewable Energy goal.

The target’s politics

Those who disguise cynicism for realpolitiks may  say 1.5TW is aiming too high and a global fossil fuel phase out is politically not possible. But both are not only necessary, they are feasible.

This year, the world will add a record 0.44TW of new renewable capacity –  double what the IEA expected for 2020. This represents a jump in renewable installment of about a third compared to last year.

Taking 0.440TW as the 2023 base, we don’t even need yearly growth of a third – a quarter is enough to exceed the 1.6 TW by 2029.

The UK’s retreat from climate leadership is not in its national interest

The EU falls short of what is needed and what we can achieve – but how does it to compare to the position of the UAE?

Al Jaber said: “We must triple renewable energy capacity over the next seven years”. That carries multiple interpretations.

But the most straightforward is this: Global renewable electricity capacity needs to triple from the end of 2023 to 12.2 TW by 2030.

This entails adding an average of 1.2 TW of renewable capacity each year from 2024 to 2030.

Not a linear trajectory

But the growth of renewable energy capacity will not follow a linear trajectory.

Instead, we anticipate accelerating installation rates that would likely propel us well beyond the 1.5TW mark by 2030.

The crucial aspect of Al Jabers statement lies in the phrase “next seven years,”. At the same time, the oil CEO and Cop28 president Al Jaber might cynically push ambition on renewables to not have to reach a decision to phase out fossil fuels.

Identifying loss and damage is tough – we need a pragmatic but science-based approach

At Cop27, a handful of countries  – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia –  opposed language to phase out all fossil fuels, and so far Al Jaber is positioned to hide behind the same few blockers with vested interests.

At the climate talks in Bonn he infamously stated the phase down of fossil fuels is “inevitable”. The next few weeks will test if the UAE is actually serious about phasing out fossil fuels and powering up renewables.

If the UAE is serious about the energy transition, they will announce a ministerial pair on energy transition as usual for sticky issues in the COP process – to elevate discussions on fossil fuels and renewable energy and unlock progress.

If we win this crucial battle at Cop28, it will not be thanks to a low ambition-EU and the fossil-UAE, but thanks to renewable champions in the Global South like Kenya, Colombia, the Climate Vulnerable Forum and the Pacific islands.

Andreas Sieber is the Associate Director of Policy at 350.org and Nicolo Wojewoda is the Director of 350.org Europe.

The post The EU lacks ambition on Cop28 renewable targets appeared first on Climate Home News.

As the chair of this week’s International Maritime Organisation talks asked negotiators to rise in applause, they signed off on targets to cut emissions 20% by 2030, 70% by 2040 and 100% “by or around, ie close to 2050”.

For an industry with the same volume of emissions as Germany, it’s much better than the status quo. Before today there were no 2030 and 2040 targets and a goal to just halve emissions by 2050.

But is it good enough? No one could argue it’s compatible with 1.5C but negotiators from the US and the Marshall Islands claimed it kept that temperature limit “within reach”. For Stretch Armstrong maybe.

And what about that much-hyped tax on shipping emissions? World leaders discussed it in Paris two weeks ago, Latin American nations railed against it on Monday but it barely got a mention today.

Governments quietly agreed to study it with a view to implementing it by 2027. But what level it will be set at and what it will be spent on are the next issues to be fought over.

Convincing shipping negotiators to spend it on anything other than cleaning up the sector and compensating for the measure’s economic impacts will be a tough sell.

So any wealthy nation hoping it will absolve them of the need to pay into a loss and damage fund are likely to be disappointed.

This week’s news:

• UAE’s al Jaber says Cop28 will fast-track phase down of fossil fuels
• Developing nations decry risk of UK breaking climate finance pledge
• Threat of EU carbon tax prompts dubious “green aluminium” claims in Mozambique

…from shipping talks

• Pacific “mixed feelings” after compromise on shipping’s climate goals
• Governments set to fail to plot shipping industry course for 1.5C
• Shipping set to boost climate targets

…and comment

• The UK’s retreat from climate leadership is not in its national interest
• Identifying loss and damage is tough – we need a pragmatic but science-based approach

If you stand on the balcony of the IMO’s fourth-floor canteen, you can see across the Thames to the parliament in Westminster – with its Big Ben and riverside beer-drinking tents.

That’s where environment minister Zac Goldsmith drafted his resignation letter last Friday and where the fall-out from that has played out this week.

Goldsmith, who was close to former prime minister Boris Johnson, accused new prime minister Rishi Sunak of “apathy” on climate change, partying with Rupert Murdoch instead of discussing global financial reform with Mia Mottley and abandoning the UK’s flagship climate finance pledge.

The doubt cast on that pledge has worried developing countries. An African negotiator told us it was “disappointing” while Senegal’s Madeleine Diouf Sarr said it echoed the failed $100 billion pledge.

Former Cop26 speechwriter Alex Urwin writes that it’s not just bad for the developing world but for the UK too.

This article originally stated in the first sentence that Bhutan set the world’s first net zero target in 2015. This was based on a claim by the World Resources Institute. But a 2015 study says that New Zealand was the first country to set a carbon neutral target in 2007.

The post Shipping catches up – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

After two weeks of negotiations which Kiribati’s negotiator described as “challenging and distressing” for everyone, negotiators at the headquarters of the United Nations shipping arm rose to applaud the agreement of the shipping industry’s new climate strategy today.

At the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), they agreed that the sector will aim to cut emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040 and reach net zero “by or around, ie close to 2050”.

The targets are less ambitious than those that international bodies including the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) consider compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

While not legally binding, the agreement sends a signal to the industry on the direction of travel. Future work is planned to set out concrete measures that aim to reduce emissions, for example by introducing more climate-friendly fuel standards.

In the final evening of the talks, the Pacific island nations managed to include provisions for the sector to "striv[e]" for a 30% reduction by 2030 and an 80% cut by 2040. It was a last-minute victory that allowed them to claim that the global temperature limit of 1.5C was kept "in reach".

Despite resistance, the meeting agreed to look into a tax on shipping emissions - although how much the tax should be and how the money should be spent will be fought over at future meetings.

Chasm bridged

The meeting was marked by divisions between Pacific islands and developed countries that wanted more ambition and big emerging economies, especially in South America, that expressed concern about making shipping more expensive and damaging global trade and their economies.

In final comments, after the deal was agreed, Tuvalu's negotiator said he was “very disappointed with a strategy which falls short of what we needed".

The Marshall Islands negotiator said he had "mixed feelings" and there was "much work to do to make sure 1.5 remains not just within reach but a reality”.

Constructive talks

On the other hand, India's negotiator said he remained concerned about "unrealistic targets” while the USA said the targets were "ambitious but also feasible”.

Governments on both sides of the debate repeatedly praised the constructive nature of talks. Brazil thanked "friends in the Pacific islands", while Tuvalu gave "thanks to Latin America and developing countries of the global south for the spirit of compromise”.

Threat of EU carbon tax prompts dubious “green aluminium” claims in Mozambique

But Vanuatu's negotiator complained that small groups of states had hashed out deals in closed rooms.

As it was his first IMO meeting, he said "it strikes me that there needs to be better transparency and open decision-making".

https://twitter.com/RRegenvanu/status/1677012808632786953

The IMO rules ban journalists from reporting negotiators' names without their permission.

Playing catch up

As they transport goods around the world, ships burn huge amounts of polluting fuel. This contributes around 3% of the world's total emissions, more than major nations like Germany.

But, like plane travel, international shipping is not included in countries' climate plans, so they gather at the United Nations shipping arm, the IMO, in London to set the rules.

UAE’s al Jaber says Cop28 will fast-track phase down of fossil fuels

Most big emitters already have net zero targets and the body governing international plane travel set an "aspirational" net zero by 2050 goal last year.

But, before negotiators gathered in London, the shipping sector only had a target, set in 2018, to cut emissions in half on 2008 levels by 2050. The sector had no targets for 2030 or 2040.

Road to net zero

Since that target was set in 2018, momentum has grown towards setting a net zero goal. Big developing countries like Nigeria, Chile and Vietnam had joined developed countries and climate vulnerable Pacific islands in calling for such an outcome.

After a week of behind closed door talks in London, the chair produced a draft agreement this Monday which included a goal to reach net zero "by 2050 at the latest" or "by or around 2050".

In an open meeting on Monday, the “2050 at the latest” goal was supported mainly by Pacific islands and developed countries.

On the other hand, several big developing countries like China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia called for the weaker “around 2050”.

Saudi Arabia’s representative called for a “flexible and adaptable approach” while China’s said that shipping enabled economic growth which gave the world more money to spend battling climate change.

Delegates attending the opening session of the IMO meeting in London. Photo: International Maritime Organization

After two days of talks in a large IMO meeting room that was closed to the press, the chair produced a new draft which compromised on "by or around, ie close to 2050".

The US negotiator said this was a "clear signal to all stakeholders that we need to take decisive action".

As ships usually last for decades, some being built now will still be in use around 2050.

Indicative checkpoints

As the prospect of a 2050 net zero goal increased over the last few years, campaigners and some governments turned their focus to more immediate targets.

The industry's emissions are currently rising and are predicted to keep doing so until 2050, unless shipping changes.

Pacific islands, the US and the UK went to London calling for cuts of 36% by 2030 and 96% by 2040, which stem from what the SBTi judged compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Six main proposals for new shipping GHG targets on deck @IMOHQ this week... China leading charge against as apparently tougher targets in line with 1.5C would undermine UN #climate talks. Work that one out. pic.twitter.com/2D7fcCbLyd

— Ed King (@edking_I) July 2, 2023

The European Union called for slightly less ambitious figures of 29% and 83% while sources involved in last week’s closed talks, said some countries like China, South Africa and Saudi Arabia didn’t want 2030 or 2040 targets at all.

China’s negotiator argued in open talks on Monday that the targets should be “practical, reasonable and feasible” and their impact should be assessed. He described trade and development, as well as climate, as “existential” issues.

Developing nations decry risk of UK breaking climate finance pledge

A draft strategy on Monday included targets of 20% and 70% and, despite a lobbying campaign from Pacific islands, these remained unchanged throughout the week's talks.

But Pacific islands did win a last-minute improvement in an additional goal on what to "striv[e]" for. Monday and Thursday's draft strategies included goals of 25% by 2030 and 75% by 2040.

Quoting Confucius

After talks on Thursday evening though, these were upped to 30% and 80% respectively. The Marshall Islands negotiator Albon Ishoda told journalists "these higher targets are the result of relentless, unceasing lobbying by ambitious Pacific islands, against the odds."

After the deal was struck, Malaysia’s negotiator quoted the Chinese philosopher Confucius: “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you don’t stop”.

But Vanuatu’s negotiator expressed more urgency. He said that, as the smashing of global temperature records recently showed, “none of us have time”.

The post Pacific “mixed feelings” after compromise on shipping’s climate goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

With just over a day of negotiations left at the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO), the latest draft strategy does not significantly improve on targets that were branded “not ambitious enough” and “devastating” when they were first proposed on Monday.

Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu told Climate Home at the time that he and counterparts from other Pacific island nations were “going to fight” to improve targets to reduce emissions on 2008 levels by 20% by 2030 and 70% by 2040.

“That’s what we’re here for, we’re here to lobby”, he said, hours after the talks’ chair drew up the roadmap after listening to governments debate the strategy behind-closed-doors the week before.

No improvement

But a new draft strategy was released this morning which did not substantially improve on those goals. The only increase in ambition was that additional targets to “striv[e]” for 25% by 2030 and 75% by 2040 were made a more definite part of the draft strategy.

The document has yet to be made public so negotiators and campaigners have not commented. But the 2030 and 2040 targets were slammed on Monday with Australia’s negotiator labelling them “not ambitious enough”.

Shipping contributes to around 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Identifying loss and damage is tough – we need a pragmatic but science-based approach

The Marshall Islands negotiator Albon Ishoda told journalists that “the science already told us” that “anything less than 36% by 2030 and 96% by 2040 will be detrimental” to limiting global warming to 1.5C and that will “have a devastating impact”.

The targets Ishoda called for have also been supported by the USA and UK and stem from what the Science-Based Targets Initiative judged compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

Six main proposals for new shipping GHG targets on deck @IMOHQ this week… China leading charge against as apparently tougher targets in line with 1.5C would undermine UN #climate talks. Work that one out. pic.twitter.com/2D7fcCbLyd

— Ed King (@edking_I) July 2, 2023

The European Union called for slightly less ambitious figures of 29% and 83% while sources involved in last week’s closed talks, said some countries like China, South Africa and Saudi Arabia didn’t want 2030 or 2040 targets at all.

China’s negotiator argued in open talks on Monday that the targets should be “practical, reasonable and feasible” and their impact should be assessed. He described trade and development, as well as climate, as “existential” issues.

Close to 2050

A debate over whether to target net zero “by” or “by or around” 2050 is set to be resolved with a compromise leaning more towards the weaker option. The new draft proposes targeting net zero “by or around, ie close to 2050, taking into account different national circumstances”.

In their speeches to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) talks this week, the “2050 at the latest” goal was supported mainly by Pacific islands and developed countries.

Developing nations decry risk of UK breaking climate finance pledge

The UK’s negotiator said 2050 should be “the absolute latest” and that the targets should be “in terms that can not be misunderstood”.

On the other hand, several big developing countries like China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia called for the weaker “around 2050” target and the inclusion of language about “different national circumstances”.

The draft deal contains a target to get “zero or near-zero” fuel sources to represent at least 5% of the energy used by international shipping by 2030, while pledging to “striv[e]” for 10%.

Shipping is currently powered almost completely by fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “low-carbon fuels” represent near to 0% of shipping fuel.

A controversial proposal to put a tax on ships’ emissions is included in the draft document, although that would just mean it is considered in the coming years.

Not a done deal

Although the document is understood to have been agreed by major economies like the US, EU and China, it is not a done deal yet.

Any country can call for a vote on any aspect of the agreement and change it with the support of more than half of the nations.

In the IMO, governments are often unwilling to do this. But Vanuatu’s Regenvanu said on Monday that he and others would think about calling a vote if a “minority group of countries” were going to stop a “high ambition outcome” against the will of an “overwhelming majority, and I mean like two-thirds”.

The document will be debated in talks, which are closed to the media, on Thursday afternoon.  It will then be discussed publicly by governments on Friday when talks are set to end.

The post Governments set to fail to plot shipping industry course for 1.5C appeared first on Climate Home News.

After a week of behind closed door negotiations, the talks chair put together a draft strategy on Monday which includes improved emissions cut targets for 2030, 2040 and 2050.

The strategy aims for the sector to reach net zero either “by” or “around” 2050 and targets emissions cuts on 2008 levels of 20% by 2030 and 70% by 2040.

Threat of EU carbon tax prompts dubious “green aluminium” claims in Mozambique

The document has yet to be approved, is subject to change and is less ambitious than some governments and environmental groups are calling for – but it’s a clear step up in ambition from the sector’s current goals.

Net zero in sight

In 2018, governments’ shipping negotiators agreed to cut emissions in half on 2008 levels by 2050 – despite concerns that the target was too ambitious from nations like Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and Donald Trump’s USA.

On the other hand, campaigners called for full decarbonisation by 2050 and, as support has grown in the intervening years, now look likely to get their wish.

The draft strategy document commits shipping to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions either “by 2050 at the latest” or “by or around 2050”.

That second, weaker target could include language around “different national circumstances”, which would give more leeway to developing countries.

In their speeches to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) talks this week, the “2050 at the latest” goal was supported mainly by Pacific islands and developed countries.

The UK’s negotiator said 2050 should be “the absolute latest” and that the targets should be “in terms that can not be misunderstood”. IMO rules prohibit directly naming negotiators.

On the other hand, several big developing countries like China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia called for the weaker “around 2050” target and the inclusion of language about “different national circumstances”.

Latin America leads resistance to global shipping emission tax

Saudi Arabia’s representative called for a “flexible and adaptable approach” while China’s said that shipping enabled economic growth which gave the world more money to spend battling climate change.

Checkpoints

While supporting a 2050 net-zero goal, several negotiators echoed Costa Rica’s in saying that alone is “not enough” and that interim targets are necessary.

The sector currently has no 2030 or 2040 targets and its emissions are expected to keep rising, unless it changes its ways.

The draft strategy includes a emissions cut target of 20% for 2030 and 70% by 2040, on 2008 levels. These could be supplemented by an agreement to “striv[e] for” 25% and 75% respectively.

Both targets are less than what the European Union, USA, UK, Pacific islands and others were calling for and less than what the Science-Based Targets Initiative say is aligned with 1.5C of global warming.

Australia’s negotiator said they were “not ambitious enough” and “the world is watching – more than I’ve ever seen it watching”.

The Marshall Islands negotiator Albon Ishoda told journalists that “the science already told us” that “anything less than 36% by 2030 and 96% by 2040 will be detrimental” to limiting global warming to 1.5C and that will “have a devastating impact”.

But, sources involved in last week’s closed talks, said some countries like China, South Africa and Saudi Arabia didn’t want 2030 or 2040 targets at all.

Six main proposals for new shipping GHG targets on deck @IMOHQ this week… China leading charge against as apparently tougher targets in line with 1.5C would undermine UN #climate talks. Work that one out. pic.twitter.com/2D7fcCbLyd

— Ed King (@edking_I) July 2, 2023

The talks chair, Liberian diplomat Harry Conway, told Climate Home he would look for options that could gain consensus among nations.

Conway said he would “strive as much as possible to avoid votes” but member states can choose to call a vote, although they rarely do.

Vanuatu’s negotiator Ralph Regenvanu told a press briefing that they would think about calling a vote if a “minority group of countries” were going to stop a “high ambition outcome” against the will of an “overwhelming majority, and I mean like two-thirds”.

Clean fuels

The draft deal contains a target to get “zero or near-zero” sources to represent 5% of the energy used by international shipping by 2030. This target could be strengthened by the words “at least” and “striving for 10%”.

US ‘still on the fence’ as nations debate global shipping emission tax

Shipping is currently powered almost completely by fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “low-carbon fuels” represent near to 0% of shipping’s fuel.

Discussions on how to reduce emissions have proven more contentious, with several big emerging economies, led by Brazil, resisting a proposal to tax shipping emissions and use the money to clean up the sector.

All these targets will be debated by negotiators at the IMO’s marine environment protection committee until they come to a decision on Friday.

Asked if he thought the 2030 and 2040 targets would improve, Regenvanu told Climate Home he was “going to fight” for improved targets. “That’s what we’re here for, we’re here to lobby”, he said.

Correction: This article originally incorrectly said that Albon Ishoda said that anything less than a 96% emissions reduction by 2050 will be detrimental. He actually said 2040 not 2050. This was corrected on 5 July 2023.

The post Shipping set to boost climate targets appeared first on Climate Home News.

The media is not allowed to watch the talks, hosted by the United Nation’s shipping arm in London, but six sources in the room said Latin American countries were most vocal against the measure.

A Brazilian foreign ministry spokesperson told Climate Home they opposed the levy, claiming it would distort trade, could push up the price of food and harm developing countries.

Germany-sized emissions

Global shipping produces about 3% of the world’s emissions, a similar amount to Germany, and the emissions from burning its fuel are currently only untaxed.

Pacific nations like the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands, which are extremely vulnerable to climate change, have led the push for nations to agree to a tax, also known as a levy, on emissions.

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They want that price to start at $100 per tonne of greenhouse gas produced from burning ships’ fuel, which they say would raise $60-80bn a year. This amount would decline as shipping cleans up.

With journalists banned from the venue, the Marshall Islands lead shipping talks negotiator Albon Ishoda, spoke to Climate Home in the lobby of the International Maritime Organisation.

He said that shipping has a “dirty past” and has “a responsibility, as the servant of global trade to transition and to ensure a 1.5C future”.

Governments now have until July 7 to decide whether to tax emissions from the shipping sector, which are not included in the UN climate change talks.

Discomfort

Ishoda from the Marshall Islands said that a levy causes “discomfort” among many states. There has been a lot of “misinformation guided by disinformation” and developing countries think a levy will hurt them disproportionately more, he said.

“Fair enough, we’re not saying a levy will be great all round”, he said, but the $60-80 billion a year their proposal will raise could be used to decarbonise shipping and to address any negative economic effects.

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As the talks are secret, Ishoda would not disclose who opposed the tax.

But six sources present told Climate Home that Brazil had led the resistance, joined by Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala, Ecuador, China and South Africa

At a summit in Paris last week, none of these countries signed a statement in support of the levy. 

On the other side, sources said, several European nations and Vietnam spoke in support of a levy while the US, UK, India and others neither supported nor opposed it.

“Unpredictable consequences”

A spokesperson for Brazil’s foreign ministry told Climate Home by email that they oppose a levy as it “would pose greater risks than other measures, especially for developing countries”.

They said a University of Sao Paulo study had shown that developing countries that export low value-added products to far away places are “likely to be negatively affected” by the measure.

Brazil’s main exports are iron ore, soybeans, crude petroleum and sugar. The countries which take the most of its exports are China and the USA.

The study suggests that a levy would decrease exports across the world, boost some economies mainly in developed countries and harm others mainly in developing countries, particularly in Africa.

Impacts on GDP in % – red is a hit of more than 1% while blue is a gain (Photo credit: Pereda et al)

The Brazilian foreign ministry spokesperson continued to say that the levy “could have unpredictable consequences” like changes to contracts and the substitution of agricultural crops and could increase food prices “with harmful effects for the poorest populations”.

Supporters of the $100 a tonne levy point out that the price of shipping fuel swings drastically over time. Over the last few years, it has varied from $200 a tonne to $600 a tonne, largely depending on the price of oil.

While Ishoda said the levy’s revenues could compensate for any negative effects, the Brazilian foreign ministry spokesperson said that this money was a problem too.

They said that governments could come to rely on these revenues and then have to find substitute sources of income as the shipping sector decarbonises and the money stops coming in.

Not a climate finance fix

Over the last year, the idea of a tax on shipping emissions has shot from obscurity onto the agenda of some of the world’s most powerful people.

Hosting a summit in Paris of nearly 40 heads of state last week, French president Emmanuel Macron said he was “in favor of an international taxation” to finance climate action and later mentioned a tax on maritime transport as an option. US treasury sectretary Janet Yellen said at the summit that it was “something the United States will look at”.

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Ishoda said he was at the Paris summit too. But “my message was simply to inform them – this money is not to fill in the gap where you failed”, he said.

The Brazilian foreign ministry spokesperson said they were also concerned  that the levy “may have the effect of partly releasing developed countries of their [climate finance] commitments”.

The levy “introduces a debate on climate financing that should not be undertook at the IMO”, the spokesperson added.

Rich nations have failed to provide the developing world with the level of climate finance they promised, a failure large developing countries often hold up as a reason they can’t cut emissions faster.

Over this week and next, governments will decide whether to include a levy on shipping emissions in their list of potential measures to reduce shipping’s emissions.

The level of the levy and what the money will be user for will be decided at future meetings.

This article was updated on 30 June 2023 to include the Brazilian foreign ministry’s comments, to add China to the list of countries opposing the tax and to correct the proposal from $100 a tonne of fuel to $100 a tonne of greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide equivalent) produced by burning the fuel. 

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When asked about the tax during a press conference in Paris on Friday, US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said it was a “very constructive suggestion” and “something the United States will look at”.

But the US was not among the 22 countries who put their names to a statement backing the idea at the Paris summit.

A State Department spokesperson told Climate Home by email that “the United States has supported a greenhouse gas fuel standard, although an economic measure such as a maritime emissions pricing mechanism could complement this standard.”

They added: “The United States is open to consideration of a maritime pricing mechanism, although it would be necessary to work through a number of important design and policy issues that would not be resolved this year.”

Pacific push

A group of Pacific islands and others have been pushing for a levy for several years at the UN shipping agency, known as the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

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Over the next two weeks, government negotiators are meeting at the IMO’s London headquarters to decide whether to include a levy on shipping emissions in their list of measures to respond to climate change.

Most of the world’s products are moved abroad by ship, often using very polluting bunker fuels. The sector is responsible for around 3% of the world’s emissions, roughly the same as Germany.

The group of nations signing up to support a levy in Paris includes the European Union, several small island states, Vietnam, Kenya and major shipbuilder South Korea. More countries have indicated support in the IMO but were not at the meeting in Paris.

The US government has not explained its stance, either in public or at the behind-closed-door IMO talks this week. The State Department did not reply to Climate Home’s request for comment.

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One delegate to the IMO talks, from a nation that supports the levy, told Climate Home the US was “still on the fence”.

Political reasons

E3G analyst Ronan Palmer said the US was not opposed to a tax but, with presidential elections next November, it “is just not going to move for it’s own political reasons”.

“If Biden gets up and says we need this tax for climate, imagine what [leading Republican presidential candidate Ron] De Santis is going to say,” Palmer said.

Aoife O’Leary, head of the shipping think tank Opportunity Green, said US concerns that a tax would have to be put to Congress were unfounded. The US’s domestic law to prevent pollution from ships, signed in 1980, allows amendments to the international convention which governs shipping emissions without approval from Congress, she said.

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As a major polluter, O’Leary added, “the US has a large moral responsibility to support this levy”.

Delaine McCullough, shipping lead at US-based campaign group Ocean Conservancy, said she thought the US would only support a levy if it was combined with a fuel standard, which tells shipping companies they have to make their fuel cleaner each year.

She said her understanding was that the US government felt that shipping companies would just pay the levy and not change to cleaner ways of operating.

But a levy high enough to change their behaviour would be difficult to get agreement on for “political” reasons, she said.

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Different options

Last year, governments agreed that they would put a price on shipping emissions. But they have not agreed what form this would take or how much should be paid.

Alternatives to a levy include a system where emissions are capped and anything above that cap is traded or a reward system for reducing emissions.

A group of Pacific islands are calling for a levy with a carbon price of $100 a tonne on bunker fuels, while the world’s biggest container shipping company Maersk has called for a $150 a tonne levy.

But the shipping industry’s trade association has previously supported a levy of just $2 a tonne of fuel to fund research and development of clean shipping technology.

Some nations, particularly in the developing world, are calling for the money to be spent not just on cleaning up the industry but on other climate projects.

This article was updated on 30 June to include the State Department’s comment

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Industry groups fear the ban could set a precedent for wider limitations across Europe on short-haul flying – once a symbol of cross-border liberalisation and now increasingly under fire.

French and European airports and regional airlines are laying out a new strategy to counter the ban on three French short-haul flight routes, which is in place for three years.

While they say a formal legal challenge is unlikely, they plan to invoke freedom of movement – one of four basic freedoms enshrined in European law – in informal reviews of the law expected to take place twice a year, and to lobby the government.

“We have the principle established by the EU of an open, liberalised market with the freedom to provide air services for any European airlines between any point within Europe,” one senior industry official said.

“And that’s basically to support the freedom of movement, people and citizens across Europe.”

The freedom of movement argument wades into one of the most sensitive topics in European politics, but faces considerable hurdles given its complexity, European sources said.

Limited impact

Industry bodies also claim the ban – which impacted far fewer routes than environmental groups had hoped – is ultimately ineffective in significantly curbing emissions.

Scara, a group representing regional French airlines that lobbied aggressively to water down the original ban, said it would also use review periods to claim that the ban has no real impact.

“We’ll embarrass people with the data,” said Willie Walsh, head of a global trade association for airlines, said on the sidelines of the Airline Economics conference in Dublin.

“If we banned all flights of less than 500 km in Europe…it would be less than 4% of the CO2 in Europe, right? I think there’s a perception that it would be 80%. It’s not a solution,” he told Reuters.

Of the EU’s 27 member states, 21 have total yearly emissions which are less than 4% of the EU’s total.

According to the Union of French Airports, which plans to complain to France’s Council of State about the ban, likely by the end of this month, the routes that will be banned represent only 0.23% of France’s air transport emissions, 0.04% of transport sector emissions and 0.02% of the air transport sector’s emissions.

Green campaign group Transport and Environment has produced similar estimates.

Calls for more measures

Green lobbyists say the figures show that the flight ban is too limited. They want wider restrictions, and are preparing to counter the industry’s efforts to reverse the ban.

Jo Dardenne, aviation director at campaign group Transport and Environment said the ban is an important signal to countries keen to reduce aviation emissions.

“It’s to show that… you have the right to actually cap emissions from your aviation sector,” she said.

She added: “The French domestic flight ban is an important message that more needs to be done to address aviation’s climate impact, but governments shouldn’t ignore the biggest chunk of the sector’s emissions linked to long haul flights. These are currently ignored or even exempted in most regulations addressing aviation emissions.”

Disappointed by the lack of ambition in the current rules, campaigners said they hope to go back to the original proposal of banning flights on routes with travel times of less than 6 hours.

“It’s hypocritical. They made the ban have no impact… they had a strong push to reduce the ambition,” Sarah Fayolle, a transport campaigner for Greenpeace in France, said.

The airline industry expects support from the EU in limiting the scope of the ban. “Europe has certainly recognized that the French law could be applied only in a limited way… So this is good,” Scara head Jean-Francois Dominiak said.

Fit for 55, a set of EU rules designed to tackle climate change and introduce reforms, will come into force across the bloc in the next two or three years and should have a more significant environmental impact, EU officials said.

But for now, the EU will stick to its approval, Henrik Hololei, director-general for mobility and transport at the European Commission told Reuters, adding the “strings attached” EU officials mandated, like review periods, make the ban reasonable.

Last year, the Danish government announced it would ban all domestic flights by 2030, unless they switch to zero-carbon fuels.

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Nigeria, Chile and Vietnam were among the countries calling for a net zero or zero carbon goal at the International Maritime Organization’s environmental committee meeting.

Campaign group Seas at Risk said there is now a clear majority in favour, which gives a good chance of getting the target agreed at the next meeting in June 2023.

Shipping is responsible for around 3% of global emissions. This share is expected to grow under the industry’s target to halve emissions from 2008 levels by 2050, as sectors like electricity generation clean up faster.

Like international air travel, international shipping is not mentioned in the Paris Agreement and is not covered by most countries’ climate plans.

Dwindling opposition

According to the Seas at Risk campaign, 32 countries spoke in favour of net zero or zero-carbon and 10 spoke against. The group said in a statement this represents a “dwindling opposition” as,  at the last meeting in May 2022, 24 countries were opposed.

Developed countries like the USA and most of Europe supported zero carbon. So did several island nations that are threatened by sea level rise like the Maldives and Marshall Islands.

Marshall Islands negotiator Albon Ishoda said: “We are the world’s most climate vulnerable state and we are calling for a 1.5[C]-aligned policy. We are among the many, many that will be sacrificed as collateral damage in this emergency which we have neither asked for or caused.”

He added that an 80% reduction by 2040 and zero emissions by 2050 were “the limits science is telling us are the minimum needed to keep a 1.5 agenda on the timetable. All the science and the progressive industry are telling us this is technically achievable and feasible.”

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Large emerging economies like China, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates warned against adopting the target.

South Africa’s negotiator, who cannot be named without prior consent under IMO rules, said it could increase shipping costs and distort trade, particularly for developing countries. These costs would likely be passed on to consumers, they said.

India’s negotiator highlighted uncertainty around what green fuels will replace fossil fuels in ships. “We should not get carried away with mere global calls without any scientific evidence to back it or actionable solutions to achieve it,” their representative said.

Brazil’s negotiator told the IMO meeting room that “setting a very ambitious goal is not analogous to achieving it” and “such levels of ambition seem technically fragile and politically risky”.

Higher costs

A report commissioned by the UK government found that switching to cleaner fuel will increase costs, especially in the short term. By 2050, costs will be about a third higher. The report says that  this increase is no higher than those caused by fluctuations in the price of fossil fuels.

The energy-related cost of shipping per unit of transport supply if all the carbon costs are reinvested in the industry and shipping goes to near zero emissions by 2050 (Photo: Umas/E4tech/Screenshot)

One of the report’s authors is Tristan Smith from University College London. He told Climate Home that the cost increase means there’s “a good case for some support for developing countries and especially small island developing states and least developed countries during the transition”.

An October 2021 report by McKinsey found that meeting a target was technically possible but which clean fuel to use was not clear. Any low-carbon fuel, like hydrogen or ammonia, is likely to raise costs for shipowners. “With low prices and already established supply chains, fossil fuels are tough competitors to beat,” it found.

Compromise zone

One delegate, who did not want to be named, told Climate Home the holdouts were looking for concessions that could include exemptions or discounts from carbon prices for ships calling at their ports. Finance to upgrade ports or a priority share of carbon market revenues are other options to sweeten the deal.

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At the IMO, the chair tries to reach consensus. If he’s unable to then countries vote and the position with the most votes wins.

The 2050 target could be to emit zero greenhouse gases or to emit net zero greenhouse gases. Net zero means that gases could be emitted but would have to be made up for by carbon offsets. Most countries preferred absolute zero.

Other topics for debate at June’s environmental committee meeting include interim targets for 2030 and 2040, and whether and how to impose a carbon price on ship emissions.

This article was amended on 20 December to more accurately reflect the method of voting in the IMO

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The “aspirational goal” was signed off by transport ministers at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao) assembly in Montreal, Canada.

But there is currently no viable technology to eliminate planes’ emissions and airlines and governments at Icao have not contemplated reducing flying itself.

Airlines have largely chosen to use much-criticised carbon offset schemes to meet their climate targets.

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A group of mostly high-income countries calling itself the “climate ambition coalition” pushed for the 2050 net zero goal against opposition from Russia and China.

Industry trade body Iata also backed the goal despite reported opposition from Chinese airlines.

At a preparatory meeting of the UN’s aviation body in July, 2050 net zero was put forward to the tri-annual Icao assembly in Montreal this week.

At the assembly, US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said the goal was “achievable if we act” and called on the assembly to “bring Icao fully into the world’s fight against climate change”.

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New Zealand’s representative wrote that the target was “the minimum aspiration this sector should aim for”.

But Russia’s representative told the assembly that the target “will without a doubt impose an unsustainable burden on the industry”.

China used a climate justice argument. Its delegation said the net zero goal “would lead to discriminatory market distortions to the disadvantage of developing countries” and that “China firmly opposes developed countries’ attempt to transfer their responsibility for emissions reductions to developing countries”.

But the majority of countries supported the net zero goal. It has been approved by the executive committee and goes to plenary today. The executive committee and plenary members are mostly the same people so it is likely to pass.

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From the assembly in Montreal, the International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation’s Tim Johnson said: “We hope Icao can agree a net zero 2050 goal today that would begin a process to bring aviation in line with the Paris Agreement. This has been a hard fought negotiation but the really hard work starts now to introduce the measures that will decarbonise the industry.”

Other campaigners were more critical. Anne Kretzschmar from Stay Grounded said: “Adopting a climate target with no binding commitments for states and no interim targets is like building an aeroplane without wings”.

Johnson said that green groups had pushed for interim targets in Montreal and, while the US and some European states had supported them, they had not wanted to jeopardise an agreement by pushing too hard for them.

Transport and Environment’s aviation lead Jo Dardenne questioned how aviation would meet its target.

“Having a long term aspirational goal on one side and then having a poor offsetting scheme [Corsia] on the other side and defending that it’s going to get aviation down to zero is just laughable,” she said.

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The industry’s main technological solution to aviation emissions is the use of “sustainable aviation fuels” made out of plant matter. A recent report from the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) cautioned growing crops for energy has some downsides for the climate and cannot be produced at the scale needed to meet projected future aviation demand.

Instead, CATF says governments should research next-generation fuels like those based on clean hydrogen. These are years away from being commercially available.

Airlines have used offsets to claim emissions reductions. But these offsets, including Icao’s own Corsia scheme, have been widely criticised. Recently, budget European airline Easyjet said it would no longer use offsets and would focus on reducing its own emissions instead.

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The strategy launch at Farnborough International Airshow was delayed from morning to afternoon, while transport secretary Grant Shapps did a media round to explain why Britain’s roads and railways couldn’t handle the heat.

Publicity for the launch was confined to a press release, stacked with supportive quotes from the industry, and a tweet, in which Shapps declared it would “allow passengers to enjoy guilt-free flying”.

A handful of activists in pig masks greeted him with the sceptical slogan: “Jet zero? Pigs might fly!”

The “guilt” of air travel comes from its outsized carbon footprint. While aviation only accounts for 2.5% of global carbon dioxide emissions, on a personal level, air travel is a polluting luxury. One long-haul flight can erase the emissions benefits of going vegetarian for a year.

It is why a UK citizens’ assembly on climate two years ago came out strongly in favour of a frequent flyer levy and ban on private jets. That was too radical for this government. Nor would it consider limiting airport growth.

Instead, it is relying on fuel efficiency, sustainable aviation fuels and carbon offsets to decarbonise – and destigmatise – the sector. The government’s “aspiration” is to run the first zero-emission domestic routes in 2030.

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The strategy sets out interim targets to net zero aviation by 2050, with a progress review every five years. For the domestic sector, it sets a more ambitious net zero target of 2040.

“We want 2019 to be remembered as the peak year for aviation emissions. From now on, it should all be downhill for carbon emissions – and steadily uphill for green flights,” said Shapps.

It is a “more challenging trajectory” than the government has previously set out, said Cait Hewitt, policy director at the Aviation Environment Federation. But there is nothing to hold the industry to account for delivering – and its track record is not good.

Campaigning organisation Possible audited every climate target the international aviation sector had set since 2000. Out of 50, all but one had been missed, abandoned or forgotten about.

As with previous aviation climate strategies, “jet zero” relies on future technology breakthroughs rather than curbing demand – and all of the options run into problems at scale. By Hewitt’s calculation, to meet the UK’s jet fuel demand entirely with e-fuel would require a windfarm the size of Northern Ireland.

“We don’t feel that the government is being honest about the challenges,” she told Climate Home News.

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Specific measures include a £165 million fund to support the development of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and a mandate requiring at least 10% of jet fuel to come from sustainable sources by 2030.

This can mean biofuels derived from algae or waste, or synthetic fuels made with green hydrogen and captured carbon. None of the options are yet commercially competitive to produce.

Gaynor Hartnell, of industry body the Renewable Transport Fuel Association, said SAF was “the only viable solution for long haul flight” and welcomed the support. But the five production plants the government expects to deliver supplies cost £500 million apiece, she added, and will require further subsidies to get off the ground.

For Greenpeace UK, reducing the number of flights is the only meaningful answer. “This government doesn’t have the courage to regulate aviation emissions yet and this isn’t a plan to do that, just a delaying tactic and a very expensive waste of time,” said campaigner Emily Armistead.

This article was updated after publication with the precise temperature record.

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From the end of 2023, Schiphol airport, the third busiest in Europe in terms of passenger traffic, will limit the maximum number of flights each year to 440,000, 12% less than in 2019, the Dutch ministry of transport said in a statement on Friday.

The flight cuts aim to restore “the balance between a well-operating international airport, the business climate, and the interests of a better and healthier living environment”, transport minister Mark Harbers said in the statement. 

The government said the airport, which has faced staff shortages this year, must rein in its growth as the country seeks to reduce CO2 emissions and pollutants such as nitrogen oxide. The Netherlands previously cut the national speed limit to 100km per hour (62 mph) to reduce nitrogen pollution.

“This is a difficult message for the aviation sector that is still recovering from the far-reaching consequences of the coronavirus pandemic,” Harbers said.

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Dutch airline KLM described the decision as “highly detrimental” and said “it does not tally with the desire to retain a strong hub function” for Schiphol. The airport said it supports a “well-thought-out approach” that helps it achieve its goal of “connecting the Netherlands with the world as an increasingly quieter and cleaner Schiphol.”

Campaigners welcomed the decision, saying it sent a clear signal that curbing aviation demand is necessary to meet climate goals.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has called for international shipping and aviation targets to be radically strengthened, in line with the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5C.

Aviation accounts for 2.1% of global emissions. The sector has agreed to an “aspirational goal” to make air travel growth carbon-neutral from 2020, establishing a carbon offsetting scheme to buy emissions reductions in other sectors.

Leo Murray, director of innovation at the NGO Possible, told Climate Home News it was a “world first development which could be hugely significant to global climate efforts.”

“Due to the extreme technical challenges of decarbonising air travel and the slow progress to date, it is almost certain that reducing overall flight numbers – at least temporarily – will be required at the global level to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Murray.

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Murray added it was unlikely that other airports would follow suit, but the flight cap weakened the argument for expansion of rival hubs such as Heathrow. 

It is the first time that a government has announced a flight cap, Koenraad Backers, director of aviation at the Dutch NGO Nature & Environment, told Climate Home News.

“It has always been growth, growth, growth up till now,” Backers said. “Tolerated is no longer the order of the day; rules also apply to the aviation industry.”

Greenpeace, which lobbied for Schiphol to reduce airport traffic, described the move as a “historic breakthrough.” 

“It is good that the Cabinet realises that Schiphol has, for years, been flying beyond all boundaries when it comes to noise, nitrogen, ultrafine particles and the climate,” Dewi Zloch, aviation expert at Greenpeace in the Netherlands, said in a statement. 

Zloch said the cuts don’t go far enough to curb aviation emissions. “This is the impetus. Schiphol needs to finally come up with a plan that takes the Paris Agreement into account,” she said. 

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At the International Maritime Organization (IMO) last week, countries broke a deadlock on mid-term measures to decarbonise the industry.

The meeting concluded that there was consensus to price shipping emissions “as part of a basket of mid-term measures,” according to a summary by the University Maritime Advisory Services (UMAS), which is partnered with University College London’s (UCL) Energy Institute. There was general support for adopting a “well-to-wake” approach and pricing emissions from fuel production to consumption onboard a ship, UMAS said.

“[Pricing shipping emissions] is not a new concept to the IMO, but previous attempts to progress it have failed. It is therefore a huge step forward that there is now consensus on this,” said Tristan Smith, director of UMAS. 

Market-based, decarbonisation measures on the table include technical ones, like introducing a fuel standard, as well as economical ones, like setting a global carbon tax for the industry. They will be discussed at a meeting of the IMO’s environment committee (MEPC) next month.

“Pricing needs to be complemented with a mandatory measure like a fuel standard, but there is now a much improved potential for strong IMO incentivisation of shipping’s decarbonisation,” Smith said.

Responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions, ships emit around one billion tonnes of CO2 every year. Without further action, shipping emissions are projected to reach 90-130% of their 2008 levels by 2050.

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Major emerging economies have heavily resisted carbon tax proposals in the past. A proposal put forward by Pacific Island nations for a carbon price of $100 per tonne on bunker fuels previously got tepid support from EU nations and the US.

But at the working group meeting last week, all EU countries and the US spoke in favour of carbon pricing, with the UK, New Zealand and the Bahamas backing the measure for the first time. 

“There can finally be no doubt we will put a carbon price on shipping,” Aoife O’Leary, a long-time IMO observer and head of Opportunity Green, a non-profit focusing on international climate issues, told Climate Home News.

The price must be high enough to transition to zero-emission fuels quickly, as well as offering a mechanism to support developing countries, O’Leary said. Countries must move to next month’s MEPC with “ambition, equity and urgency,” she said.

“The IMO meeting last week is a major breakthrough,” said Diane Gilpin, CEO of the Smart Green Shipping Alliance, which develops tech solutions to help the industry decarbonise. “Obviously there’s a lot more detail to agree but in our experience ship owners are moving to the shadow of the whip.”

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The Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands have proposed a carbon price of $100 a tonne on bunker fuels, while the world’s biggest container shipping company Maersk has called for a $150/t levy to encourage the industry to switch to greener fuels.

But the shipping industry’s trade association has previously supported a levy of just $2 a tonne of fuel to fund research and development of clean shipping technology. That translates to a carbon price of $0.64/t.

Progress at the IMO came as the European Parliament approved its Fit For 55 package, which includes incorporating shipping in the bloc’s emissions trading scheme (ETS).

This means that all ships transporting goods to and from EU, regardless of the flag they fly, will be taxed on their emissions. As of 2024, ships will have to buy carbon allowances to cover all emissions during voyages in the EU and half of those generated by international voyages that start or finish at an EU port. Three quarters of the revenues generated from the auctioning of allowances will be put into an Ocean Fund to support the industry’s decarbonisation efforts.

“We need ambitious action at every level if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said O’Leary. 

“The IMO has only given provisional agreement to a carbon price, which hopefully will move ambitiously forward but it is definitely not at the stage where it could be said that it will achieve a reduction in shipping emissions in line with 1.5C on its own,” she said.

The post UN body makes ‘breakthrough’ on carbon price proposal for shipping appeared first on Climate Home News.

On Friday, the Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) association wrote an open letter to the government. They warned that the cost of aviation fuel was rising and therefore they must “regrettably” discontinue operations indefinitely from Monday.

Sigh. pic.twitter.com/jeVIWttHEU

— Mo-Mo (@Morris_Monye) May 6, 2022

After air passengers scrambled to rebook flights before the shutdown, the AON announced on Monday that their strike was cancelled after the government agreed to talks.

The next day, the government agreed to subsidise aviation fuel, ensuring it costs no more than N480 ($1.15) a litre for three months. This is likely to cost Nigerian taxpayers between $1-3 million.

On social media, Nigerians accused the government of spending money on the elite who use air travel while neglecting road and rail transport.

“Another subsidy for the rich!” tweeted Ajiboye Ridwan, a physio from Ibadan. “They couldn’t come up with this sort of intervention for… the education sector”, said Samuel Ajao.

Another subsidy for the rich! https://t.co/RlX5XSCzCY

— Ajiboye Ridwan (PT) (@PT_ajiboye) May 10, 2022

Appearing on Arise News, Allen Onyema, one of the airline owners behind the strike threat claimed air travel was “no longer elitist”. But a one-way flight from Lagos to Abuja costs around $227, nearly twice what the average Nigerian earns in a month.

Across the world and particularly in developing countries, most flying is done by a wealthy minority. In Nigeria in 2021, there were 13 million domestic passengers, many of them the same individuals counted more than once, in a nation of 206 million.

Most Nigerians rely on road and rail to get around the country, which is cleaner but less convenient. Roads are often unpaved and both roads and the rail can be dangerous. Last month, a train carrying 362 passengers was bombed and most of the passengers were killed or kidnapped.

On social media, critics expressed fears the subsidy would become permanent. “Another subsidy scam. Three months that will never end,” said one Twitter user. “Subsidy is addictive. It is like narcotics. When you start, it is difficult to stop,” tweeted another.

Subsidy is addictive. It is like narcotics. When you start, it is difficult to stop. https://t.co/puuXgZqvG6

— Victor (@VOChuku) May 10, 2022

After the pandemic hit airlines’ profits, the government provided N4bn ($9m) to 18 domestic airlines. Air Peace CEO Allen Onyema said the government has “helped the growth of aviation more than any other government I can think of”.

He told Arise News: “We don’t pay customs duties, we don’t pay [value added tax] on ticket sales, we don’t pay [value added tax] on imported aircraft, we don’t pay [value added tax] on spares and so many other things they’ve done for us.”

Onyema is wanted in the US over 36 charges related to an alleged $20 million bank fraud.

Nigeria spends around a quarter of its budget subsidising petrol, against the advice of the World Bank. These subsidies mean that, although it is Africa’s biggest oil producer, the recent rise in the global oil price has cost the government money.

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The €6m ($6.8m) demonstration project is funded by the European Union and Turkish government. It will grow simple water-based plants, known as algae, in outdoor ponds and indoor tubes, and refine them into fuel and other products.

After touring the site on Boğaziçi University’s campus and handing out algae-based chocolates to reporters, Turkish energy and natural resources minister Mustafa Varank said: “The work is underway for the use of biofuels produced here by Turkish Airlines. We want [them] to carry out [their] first flight using biofuel from here before the end of 2022.”

Experts told Climate Home News biofuel from algae had potential but expressed scepticism it could be produced on a scale to break aviation’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Yakında, yosundan üretilen biojet yakıtı kullanılan uçaklarda seyahat edebileceğinizi biliyor muydunuz?

Avrupa’nın ilk ve tek karbon negatif entegre biorafineri projesinde pilot üretimler başladı.

Dünyanın geleceği Türkiye’de! pic.twitter.com/KxalDGj6Rm

— Mustafa Varank (@varank) January 8, 2022

Dan Rutherford is the aviation director of the International Council on Clean Transportation. He said: “Algae jet fuel is kind of like disco, [it] comes back every decade or so but in a worse form. The US government has been picking at this for at least 30 years and has never figured it out.”

In 2011, a plane flew from Houston to Chicago powered by fuel which was 40% algae-based and 60% petroleum. Solazyme, the San Francisco-based company which developed the fuel, filed for bankruptcy in 2017.

Aviation is a notoriously difficult sector to clean up. Electric batteries, the main solution to land-based transport, are heavy and not powerful enough to keep planes in the sky for long periods.

Biofuels made from plants like soy compete with forests and farms for land. As water-based plants, algae don’t pose that problem – but they still have issues.

Named: The oil companies gambling on climate failure

The main challenge is competing on price. The price of traditional jet fuel from petroleum has doubled in the past year to $830 a tonne. It is still cheaper than sustainable alternatives, which a McKinsey analysis in 2020 costed at $1,300-3,800/t, depending on the production method.

Berat Haznedaroglu, director of the Istanbul project, told Climate Home he was aiming to get the price down to $1,000/t for algae-derived fuel. He expects interest in clean fuels to grow as governments, airlines and airports try to meet their climate commitments.

“There will be a mandate coming from [industry body] IATA and the governments,” he said, adding that the increased cost of using clean fuels would be passed on to passengers. “I think it’s going to be €10-15 ($11-17) per ticket”.

Brussels-based thinktank Transport and Environment’s aviation director Andrew Murphy said: “EU investment in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) development in Turkey is a good strategy to bring that aviation market into the scope of its own SAF measures such as ReFuelEU.”

But, he added: “Algae has some concerns due to scalability, so both the EU and Turkey need to fund feedstocks which can be more easily expanded.” For example, he proposed hydrogen derived fuels like e-kerosene.

UK, Switzerland accused of undermining EU green treaty reforms

Haznedaroglu said that hydrogen-derived fuels were “a part of the toolbox” but that most hydrogen is still made from fossil fuels and “the research path for hydrogen is still a little behind algae”.

The Istanbul facility is a university-based demonstration project. It aims to prove the concept, not to become a large-scale supplier itself.

 

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Another limiting factor is the weather. A US energy department study found that algae production rates “vary dramatically from summer to winter, even in places like Florida”. Istanbul has an average maximum daily air temperature in January of 9C (48F).

Haznedaroglu said it would be preferable to grow algae in warmer southern Turkey, but there are cold-resistant forms of algae which survived recent snows in Istanbul. Algae grows in places as cold as Iceland.

The Istanbul facility will produce algae for food supplements, animal feed and fertilisers as well as jet fuel.

Rutherford said: “That’s a recurring theme on biofuels generally for aviation. You start off saying ‘jet fuel’ and then you start producing products and a lot of them are pretty fungible. They end up cosmetics, food, replacing petrochemicals.”

Haznedaroglu said that 80 cubic metres of the site’s 110 cubic metres are dedicated to biofuel production in outdoor ponds. The other 30 cubic metres are the indoor tubes.

These are more expensive but less likely to be contaminated by pollution. These are used for products like food supplements where avoiding contamination is particularly important.

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The $550bn bipartisan infrastructure bill was signed into law last month after intense negotiations between Congress Democrats and Republicans. It includes spending on green transport like $66bn on rail and $7.5bn on electric vehicle chargers as well as $25bn for airports.

Announcing the spending, the Biden administration said: “The United States built modern aviation, but our airports lag far behind our competitors. According to some rankings, no US airports rank in the top 25 of airports worldwide.”

Speaking at Dallas Fort Worth airport after meeting airline executives, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said that the bipartisan infrastructure law was “an investment in climate equity”.

Campaigners, on the other hand, said airport expansion could be “a big problem for the climate” and hurt the health of millions of Americans who live, study and work near airports. But unlike in Europe, it has not generated significant controversy, reflecting a lack of low-carbon alternatives to travel long distances.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says it will spend $15bn of the $25bn on projects that increase safety and expand capacity. Eligibility is defined under the Airport Improvement Grant criteria.

The Federal Aviation Administration is a government body which regulates aviation. (Photo: FAA/screenshot)

Projects funded by the most recent round of these grants include a new airport in Kentucky (the state’s 60th), new and extended runways in Colorado and Indiana and an expanded terminal building in North Carolina.

Sarah Burt, an environmental lawyer at Earthjustice, said that if the money was used to increase air traffic without improving the efficiency of aviation “then that is obviously going to be a big problem for the climate”.

For international flights, carbon dioxide emissions from US commercial aviation have more than doubled since 1990. For domestic flights, they’ve grown 22%.

Together, they are responsible for around 216 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the total annual emissions of Bangladesh.

As Delhi chokes, India’s supreme court is grappling with the air pollution crisis

Vera Pardee, a lawyer working on clean air litigation for the Sierra Club, said that airport expansion would hurt the health of people who live near airports.

“It is shocking to improve the facilities inside while doing nothing about the effect of the pollution that is generated outside,” she said.

Over five million Americans live and 163,000 Americans go to school within 500 metres of an airport perimeter, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Aircraft noise also has “all kinds of different health ramifications”, she added.

While many of Biden’s green infrastructure spending plans were scaled down during negotiations with Republicans, airport funding remained at $25bn throughout.

UK needs to deliver on climate, not set higher 2030 target, say advisers

Politically, the aircraft and engine manufacturers and airlines are a powerful lobby group.

Last year, a House of Representatives committee investigating the tragic 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash accused the FAA of getting too cosy with plane-builder Boeing and missing the warning signs.

The FAA’s boss Stephen Dickson was a senior executive at Delta Airlines before Donald Trump appointed him as the aviation regulator’s administrator.

The FAA released a plan this year for a net-zero emissions US aviation system by 2050. It relies on carbon offsets, using more sustainable fuel, increasing aircraft efficiency and cutting airport emissions. There is no suggestion of curbing demand for flights.

Critics of offsets argue that getting developing countries to reduce emissions so that Americans can keep flying is unfair and that the offset projects often don’t deliver the benefits they claim to.

On Thursday, a United Airlines jet claimed to be the world’s first to run one of its engines on 100% sustainable aviation fuel, derived from organic waste. But such fuels are expensive and there are concerns that scaling up production would entail growing crops for energy that competed for land with food sources and forests.

China ‘trumps’ the west by pledging larger share of IMF relief to African nations

The FAA’s guidelines state that, once airports reach 60% capacity, they should begin planning to build or extend their runway or extend their hours.

According to a Journal of Air Transport Management study, this has led to many US airports, like Denver, Orlando and Miami, expanding while still relatively far from capacity.

Despite its climate impacts, US and European aviation campaigners said the bill’s airport spending has not received the level of protest which similar measures in Europe have.

US-based E3G senior associate Alden Meyer said: “There are concerns around expansion in some local areas but it’s more related to the noise and congestion than it is climate-driven.”

‘Subversion and treason’: Australian minister attacks independent climate body

In Europe, the concept of “flight shame” has taken hold, with travellers opting to stay home or travel over land – since before the coronavirus pandemic led to wider restrictions. The term originated in Sweden and was popularised by teen activist Greta Thunberg, who sailed from the UK to New York for the United Nations general assembly in 2019 to avoid flying.

European campaigners have focussed on cancelling airport expansions and increasing taxes on aviation to reduce the number of kilometres flown rather reducing per-kilometre emissions.

In February, the French government cancelled an expansion of Paris’s main airport on climate grounds. A battle over plans to add a third runway to London’s Heathrow Airport has been making UK headlines for nearly 15 years.

UK-based anti-aviation campaigner Leo Murray said the US is “sadly lagging many years behind the UK public and political discourse” on this issue.

Brussels-based campaigner Andrew Murphy pointed out that the European Investment Bank had agreed to end financing of airport expansion, adding that the US “bailout for airports will only drive emissions from the sector higher”.

There is less of a history of anti-airport activism in the US, where taking a train instead is only an option on a limited number of routes.

US campaigners have focussed on reducing emissions per flight. Burt and Pardee are challenging the Biden administration’s acceptance of Trump-era plane emissions standards which Pardee said “do absolutely nothing” as they are “12 years behind business as usual”.

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When burned, heavy fuel oil emits black carbon – sooty particles that absorb sunlight and trap heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. It is a particular problem in the Arctic, where it darkens the ice so it reflects less light back into space. Between 2015 and 2019, black carbon emissions from ships increased by 85% in the Arctic, according to the Clean Arctic Alliance.

Campaigners welcomed the move, which they said could significantly cut pollution, but noted it was a voluntary measure and relied on governments to introduce supportive policies.

“If all shipping currently using heavy fuel oils while in the Arctic were to switch to distillate fuel, there would be an immediate reduction of around 44% in black carbon emissions from these ships,” said Sian Prior, from the Clean Arctic Alliance. 

“If particulate filters were installed on board these vessels, black carbon emissions could be reduced by over 90%”, she added.

“It is questionable how many private companies will act as a result,” John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, told Climate Home News.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Russia resisted binding action on black carbon, according to Maggs. “There is likely to be ongoing hostility towards and blocking of the much needed mandatory measures at IMO, but now individual states have been given a green light to take action themselves,” he said. 

Kenyan forest communities sidelined as government misses two billion tree target

Despite mounting pressure during Cop26, little headway was made on decarbonising the shipping industry – which emits around one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. The agreed IMO target is to halve that by 2050 – and without further action, shipping emissions are projected to reach 90-130% of their 2008 levels.

Countries considered strengthening a global climate goal to reduce shipping emissions, but deferred a decision until 2023, when the IMO is set to review its long-term strategy.

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While countries including the UK, US and Panama – which has the biggest flag registry – backed the Pacific resolution, major emerging economies including India and South Africa objected on equity grounds. They said rich countries should act first and provide finance to help them transition to cleaner fuels.

Despite the pushback, campaigners said the parameters of ambition were shifting. Several years ago, there was strong resistance to setting an absolute emissions goal for industry. At last week’s meeting, the debate centred on whether the target should be zero or net zero emissions. 

Morocco accused of “greenwashing occupation” of Western Sahara 

“Most of those who spoke were talking about absolute zero by 2050 and not net zero with ‘get out of jail free’ offsets,” said Maggs. 

India, the UAE, Bahamas and Liberia were among the countries wanting to leave the door open to carbon offsets.

“It’s important that the IMO moves forward, focused on real in-sector emission reductions and not think it can instead use accountants to spirit away its climate impact,” said Maggs.

The post UN shipping body agrees voluntary measures to cut black carbon in the Arctic appeared first on Climate Home News.

That was the upshot of talks in the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) environment committee on Monday and Tuesday.

There was no consensus behind a specific proposal by three Pacific island nations – the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Kiribati – to make international shipping emissions-free by 2050.

While countries including the UK, US, Canada, Japan and Panama, which has the world’s largest flag registry, backed the resolution, major emerging economies including India, China, South Africa and Turkey, objected on equity grounds. They said the strategy needed to reflect differentiated responsibilities for climate change and deliver finance to help them decarbonise, with targets based on scientific data.

There were signs of broader support in principle for setting a zero, or net zero, target for the sector, which is responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions. This was influenced by the latest science and pressure emerging from this month’s Cop26 climate summit to do more.

“We have a clear majority for zero by 2050,” said Aoife O’Leary, a long-time observer of IMO negotiations and head of Opportunity Green, a non-profit focusing on international climate issues, including shipping. “I’m pleasantly surprised that the Cop26 momentum is holding, although it could be better and stronger.”

Comment: After Cop26, countries must turn climate promises into action on global shipping

Ships emit around one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. Without further action, shipping emissions are projected to reach 90-130% of their 2008 levels by 2050.

The IMO has a target of reducing international shipping’s emissions by at least 50% by 2050, compared to 2008 levels, which campaigners say is woefully inadequate and far from what is needed to limit global heating to 1.5C.

In the run-up to Cop26, UN chief Antonio Guterres singled out the shipping and aviation sectors for failing to set global targets consistent with meeting the 1.5C goal and called for shipping to be zero emissions by 2050.  “[These sectors’ targets] are more consistent with warming way above 3 degrees,” he said. 

At the summit in Glasgow, 14 nations, including the US, UK and several European countries, endorsed a declaration calling for zero emission shipping by 2050.

However some EU countries that signed the Cop declaration did not support the Pacific islands’ proposal, describing it as “waste of time”. They said efforts should instead be directed towards defining clear short-term targets and mandatory measures to implement these.

Nigeria commits to annual carbon budgets to reach net zero under climate law

“We believe it is not only important to highlight the need for an ambitious target for 2050 but also for absolute emission targets for 2030 and 2040,” one of Germany’s delegates at the IMO told Climate Home News.

“We are in favour of the adoption of a dedicated work plan for the revision of the initial strategy which includes [absolute 2030 and 2040] targets,” said the German delegate. Delegates for Spain and France told Climate Home that they opposed the resolution on similar grounds.

The IMO has a goal of reducing the sector’s carbon intensity – rather than its absolute emissions – by 40% by 2030, on 2008 levels. This translates to just a 2% reduction each year, whereas a 6–7% annual reduction is needed to be compatible with 1.5C, according to analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

While supportive of short term action, campaigners said a review of long term ambition could not wait until 2023.

“That’s two years lost during which a clearly stated new higher level of IMO ambition could have been influencing the development of appropriate new measures to cut shipping’s climate impact,”  John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, told Climate Home News. 

“In those two years the industry will have emitted around 20% of its total 1.5C carbon budget,” he said. 

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The main barrier to action is the belief that the transition can take place in the 2030s, said Maggs. “It has to happen in the 2020s. Shifting to zero by 2050 will help with this but only make a big difference if the logic of 1.5 degrees is translated into an ambitious 2030 target.”

“At the moment there are too many shipowners passing the buck and waiting for alternative fuels,” he said.

There was debate over whether a target should be for net zero or absolute zero emissions. India, the UAE, Bahamas and Liberia were among countries wanting to leave the door open to carbon offsets.

“The language regarding increased ambition and getting to zero by 2050 is very muddled at this point and, so far, has no teeth. There are references to net zero and carbon neutrality which are worrying, but currently countries are only making general comments about their positions,” Jim Gamble, the Arctic programme director at non-profit Pacific Environment, told Climate Home News,

The post UN shipping body considers zero emissions goal, defers decision to 2023 appeared first on Climate Home News.

World leaders, youth, entrepreneurs, and citizens gathered and debated how we will save ourselves from the climate crisis we have caused.

As the leader of a country whose very existence depends on the outcome, I was heartened to see so many people take to the streets to demand action.

Now I ask everyone to look beyond the Cop and push for climate ambition and equity in international shipping.

Cop26 concluded with lots of commitments and promises from both the public and private sectors.

Although this is still not enough, it is more than we have seen before, and hopefully marks the start of a new momentum that will lead us to a zero-carbon future by 2050.

For the billions of people across the globe in harm’s way, there is simply no other choice.

African nations settled for ‘moral pact’ with US on adaptation finance at Cop26

If words are not translated into action, we have accomplished nothing. Because solving climate change is not about attending a conference.

It is about making transformational change to the way the world works, ending our reliance on fossil fuels and ensuring that – for the first time in human history – we are not building systems that exploit the most vulnerable among us, but instead increase equity.

The first test comes up this week, at a meeting of the UN’s shipping agency called the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

From the historic banks of the River Thames in London, 175 IMO member states regulate international shipping.

A sector that delivers 80% of all goods across the globe – yet produces an estimated 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions every year.

Comment: The street and the boardroom are closer than they have ever been on climate

For decades the IMO has quietly gone about its business, a club of nations and shipping companies shaking hands well outside the public eye.

The IMO’s current climate ambition – adopted just in 2018 – is to reduce emissions by at least 50% by 2050.

This is a far cry from what is needed to address the “code red” warning we have been given on climate change, and well out of step with current calls for a zero-emission world by 2050.

One group of countries trying to change this at Cop26 has been the Climate Vulnerable Forum.

It includes over 50 vulnerable countries that are on the frontline of climate impacts as well as major maritime nations like my own, with key roles to play at the IMO.

In the Dhaka-Glasgow Declaration adopted at Cop26, we called on the IMO to set targets that will clearly align the sector with the goal of keeping temperature increases to 1.5C or below, and to implement policy that simultaneously drives technology change and improves equity.

With Cop26 over, and the underwhelming progress made to raise climate finance and commit targeted actions on loss and damage and adaptation, this call has never been more timely.

Mia Mottley: the ‘fearless’ leader pushing a global settlement for the climate frontlines

The IMO has in the past taken bold actions, such as on safety and oil spill prevention.

With shipping the cornerstone of new energy use and supply, as well as of trade and development, the agency is uniquely positioned to show leadership again and drive the action needed to deliver on climate ambition, innovation, and equity.

The world must turn its gaze to the IMO this November. There, countries – the same countries that have just left Glasgow with grand statements of commitment and ambition – will be deciding whether to translate their climate pledges into concrete action at the IMO.

They have in their power to choose a new path for international shipping, with strong investment in green technologies, clean fuels and ports, and economic opportunities that support a just and equitable transition to a zero-emissions future.

Or they can continue with uncertainty, weak investments and a trajectory that will see emissions from shipping rise by up to 30% by 2050, making the goals of the Paris Agreement all but unattainable.

If the IMO takes bold and ambitious action, I believe there is hope for the larger commitments laid out in Glasgow. If not, it will be another nail in the coffin of nations like the Marshall Islands, and the millions of people whose homes and livelihoods will be destroyed by uncontrolled climate change.

I call on fellow leaders, heads of states, CEOs, and civil society, from around the world to help ensure that actions taken at the IMO and across the international community measure up to the rhetoric we have heard. It is up to us to shine the light on these discussions and ensure there is action.

David Kabua is the president of the Marshall Islands. 

The post After Cop26, countries must turn climate promises into action on global shipping appeared first on Climate Home News.

Electrifying the car industry took centre stage on “transport day” of the climate summit, in line with UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s slogan for the summit of “coal, cars, cash and trees”. There were also headline events on decarbonising shipping and aviation.

But an announcement on phasing out the internal combustion engine on Wednesday underwhelmed – leading many delegates to question why bikes, buses, trains and walking had not been given higher billing.

While a group of governments and companies signed up to eliminate new car emissions by 2040, the world’s top two automakers and major markets Germany, China and the US were not among them.

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In European cities, choosing a bike over a car for one journey a day cuts an average person’s transport emissions by 67%, according to research by the University of Oxford.

Outside the conference centre, campaigners gathered on their bikes, calling for increased funding in public transport as well as walking and cycling paths.

How much focus will there be today on #transport day at #COP26 on #bikes #cycling #mobility shift #publictransport #buses #trains or will it be all about #cars? We can’t just replace petrol/diesel cars with #ElectricVehicles pic.twitter.com/A29yfKKXN8

— Philippa Nuttall (@PhilippaNuttall) November 10, 2021

“I’m genuinely shocked by the absence of active travel in the COP26 transport discussions. Decarbonising road transport is a key part in tackling the climate crisis. We need fewer motor vehicles and those we do have, need to be cleaner/greener,” Will Norman, the mayor of London’s walking and cycling commissioner, said on Twitter.

“So unbelievably disappointing and elitist to present EV cars as the solution,” tweeted Sophie Eastwood.

Climate scientist Richard Betts tweeted in praise of the host city’s hire bike scheme and said better infrastructure was needed to make cycling an easier choice.

Public transport must double in cities over the next decade to meet the 1.5C target, according to analysis by C40 cities published on Wednesday.

Daniel Firth, transport and urban planning director at C40 Cities, told Climate Home News: “If we stopped the sale of fossil fuel vehicles tomorrow it would take 15-20 years to have 100% [zero emission vehicles] because of the time it takes to change the whole fleet. So it would take too long if that was our only strategy. Whereas we could start putting in bike lanes and bus lanes tomorrow.”

https://twitter.com/bikingbotanist/status/1458385857338122242

“It’s a missed opportunity,” Henk Swarttouw, president of the European Cyclists’ Federation, told Climate Home News. “Cycling is low-tech, low-cost and low-investment and provides quick climate wins,” he said.

“At the political level, leaders must confirm that the solution to reducing emissions needs to be a package that includes the electrification of vehicles, public transport and cycling,” Swarttouw said. “It’s not either or.”

The coronavirus pandemic led to a huge surge in cycling. In the UK, miles cycled per person increased by 62% during 2020, the highest levels since 2002. Each kilometre travelled by bike instead of car saves an average of 150 grams of CO2 emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme. “You could reach half a tonne over the year,” said Swarttouw.

Transport week at #COP26 so I think it’s time we started talking VERY LOUDLY about this wonderful crisis-beating machine and what it can give us all https://t.co/VCPDFms7mt

— Chris Boardman CBE (@Chris_Boardman) November 8, 2021

Increasing investment in green public transport, cycling and walking is part of the UK government’s 10-point plan for a “green industrial revolution, along with accelerating a shift to zero emissions vehicles. A spokesperson for the Cop26 presidency had not responded to Climate Home’s questions at time of publication.

The post As Cop26 car pledge underwhelms, delegates ask: where are the bikes? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate goals set at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which sit under the UN umbrella, are consistent with more than 3C of global warming, he said.

Antonio Guterres told the Global Sustainable Transport Conference in Beijing on Thursday: “Transport, which accounts for more than one quarter of global greenhouse gases, is key to getting on track. We must decarbonize all means of transport, in order to get to net-zero emissions by 2050.”

He added: “Let’s be honest. While member states have made some initial steps through the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization to address emissions from shipping and aviation, current commitments are not aligned with the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris Agreement. In fact, they are more consistent with warming way above 3 degrees”.

He then made three specific calls: for the phase-out of production of polluting road vehicles by 2035-2040, for shipping to be zero emissions by 2050 and for aviation’s emissions per passenger to reduce 65% by 2050.

The IEA is embracing 1.5C ambition, leaving no excuse for new fossil fuel investment

On shipping, Guterres said: “Zero emission ships must be the default choice, and commercially available for all by 2030, in order to achieve zero emissions in the shipping sector by 2050.”

This echoes a proposal by three Pacific Island nations, which will be debated at an IMO meeting in November.

One of those pushing the proposal is the Marshall Islands ambassador Albon Ishoda. He told Climate Home News that he was “absolutely glad that [Guterres] is making that call – it certainly aligns with our view for urgency”.

Peter Nuttall, from the Micronesian Center for Sustainable Transport, said that the zero carbon by 2050 proposal “has gone from dark horse to obvious choice”.

The current IMO target, set after fierce debate in 2018, is to reduce emissions at least 50% by 2050 on 2008 levels while pursuing complete decarbonisation.

Cargo ships have a life expectancy of 25-30 years, making the long term goal directly relevant to ships built this decade.

Japan eyes international carbon offsets to deliver 2030 emission cuts

While campaigners celebrated the shipping element of his speech, others told Climate Home News that his aviation and road vehicle proposals were not ambitious enough.

Andrew Murphy, aviation director of the Transport and Environment NGO, said: “Per passenger efficiency has not been useful in aviation. It’s allowed the sector to keep on growing its emissions.”

The annual number of kilometres flown by passengers nearly doubled between 2010 and 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic caused a drastic drop off. Growth is expected to rebound and continue in the coming decades.

ICAO agreed an “aspirational goal” in 2016 to make the growth in air travel carbon neutral from 2020, establishing a carbon offsetting scheme to buy emissions reductions in other sectors. A number of loopholes and rule changes in response to Covid mean the first airlines are not expected to start paying for pollution permits before 2023.

Guterres said that “companies must start using sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) now” to reduce their emissions rather than offsetting them. Murphy questioned whether many SAFs are really sustainable, as they involve burning crops that compete for land with food and forests.

SAFs can also be produced with renewable electricity and this may be more economically viable as the world develops more renewables, Murphy said.

Leo Murray, director of innovation at the Possible NGO, said that this renewable energy would be better used by other sectors as producing jet fuel is “incredibly inefficient”. He said that the priority should be reducing flying rather than shifting planes to SAFs.

The aviation industry association IATA recently agreed a plan to reach net zero by 2050, saying 65% of the emissions reductions could come from using SAFs.

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On road vehicles, Gutteres’s call was to “phase out the production of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 for leading manufacturing countries, and by 2040 for developing countries”.

Julia Poliscanova, Transport and Environment’s vehicles expert, said: “Broadly this call is very welcome. But from the global climate perspective and taking the lifetime of cars into account 2040 is too late”.

The biggest producers of vehicles in 2021 were China, the US, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Mexico.

The focus of most policy-makers and campaigners has been on setting phase-out dates for the sale and registration, rather than the production, of new internal combustion engine vehicles.

While no countries plan to ban production of internal combustion engine vehicles, some richer nations have planned to stop the sale or registration of internal combustion engine cars by dates in between 2030 and 2050.

As of June 2021, these governments had set phase-out dates for the sale or registration of polluting cars. (Photo: ICCT)

The post UN boss calls for stronger aviation and shipping climate goals in line with 1.5C appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a proposal to the UN’s shipping body, the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Kiribati cited a major report published earlier this month summarising the latest climate science.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said to limit global heating to 1.5C, the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement, global carbon dioxide emissions must fall rapidly and reach net zero by 2050. On current trends, the temperature threshold is due to be breached by 2040.

In a letter to his fellow delegates, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Albon Ishoda wrote: “The findings of the recent [IPCC] report could not be clearer and fill us, the most vulnerable to this climate emergency, with alarm.”

He added: “Humanity is at a tipping point. Without immediate and decisive action to now peak and rapidly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of all sectors, states and cultures such as ours will be consigned to history.”

Rising sea levels make coastal flooding a common occurrence for the low-lying Marshall Islands (Photo: Genevieve French/Greenpeace)

In 2018, shipping produced more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent globally, a 10% increase on 2012 and more than the annual emissions of Germany.

World governments’ current plan, agreed after fierce debate at the IMO in 2018, is to reduce international shipping’s emissions at least 50% by 2050 on 2008 levels while pursuing complete decarbonisation. Cargo ships have a life expectancy of 25-30 years, making the long term goal directly relevant to ships built this decade.

Tristan Smith, a low carbon shipping expert at University College London, said the proposal would remove the initial strategy’s “ambiguity”, making full decarbonisation a time-limited target not just an “upper bound” of ambition.

As well as absolute emissions reduction targets, the current strategy says carbon intensity – the emissions from each tonne of cargo shipped a given distance – should be reduced 40% by 2030 on 2008 levels. That translates to a 2% reduction each year. Ishoda dismissed this as “business as usual”.

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The island states’ proposal will be considered at the IMO’s next environmental committee meeting 22-26 November, shortly after UN climate talks at Cop26 in Glasgow, UK.

In 2018, there was resistance to high ambition on climate from major emerging economies like Brazil and India, oil producers Iran and Saudi Arabia and seafaring nations like the Philippines. They raised concerns a stronger target would increase costs, holding back trade and development.

The US, which opposed the existing target under Donald Trump, is taking a more ambitious line on climate action under Joe Biden. How that applies at the IMO is unclear. In April, climate envoy John Kerry said that shipping should have zero emissions by 2050, but at the IMO in June the US representative declined to endorse a proposed carbon price on bunker fuel.

Ishoda told Climate Home News: “We are not naïve to the idea that it may be a very difficult discussion in the IMO – but we are also not naïve to the most recent IPCC report which has clearly justified that more needs to be done in terms of emissions reductions.”

The IMO’s current climate targets were agreed at this MEPC meeting in London in 2018 (Photo: IMO/Flickr)

Smith said “it is possible to be passed”. He added: “There is a lot of pressure on the IMO because [the last environmental committee meeting] MEPC76 was so underwhelming and that will likely lead to it being quite heavily criticised at Cop26.”

The Paris Agreement, signed by 196 countries, aims to hold global warming to “well below 2C” above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C. According to Climate Action Tracker, the IMO’s current targets are consistent with more than 3C of warming.

Since the IMO’s strategy was agreed in 2018, many countries have committed to net zero within their borders by 2050. Smith said: “If you’re already signed up to net zero by 2050 in your economy, why would you not want zero emissions in the international shipping?”

Those signed up to net zero by 2050 include Argentina and Chile, coastal countries heavily reliant on shipping that have opposed climate action at the IMO.

The post Pacific islands call for zero carbon shipping by 2050, citing IPCC report appeared first on Climate Home News.

At an environmental committee meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands jointly proposed a carbon price of $100 a tonne on bunker fuels.

Major emerging economies mainly opposed the measure and the principle of a carbon tax, while European countries backed carbon pricing in some form but did not endorse the specific proposal. The US was neutral on the topic.

The Marshall Islands ambassador to the IMO Albon Ishoda told Climate Home News: “There is clearly division at IMO as to those who are prepared to proactively move forward and those who prefer to delay at all costs.”

One of the only countries to directly support the proposal was Tonga. Its representative said it was “the only measure so far proposed which can achieve 1.5C alignment and an equitable transition”, referring to the most ambitious global warming limit in the Paris Agreement.

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European countries like France, The Netherlands, Italy and Finland said the $100 levy should be considered by a working group set up by the IMO on medium and long-term measures to reduce emissions.

Climate Home News understands that developed countries regard the price as too high and have concerns about how the funds raised will be spent.

When asked if $100 was too high, Ishoda told Climate Home News: “The science is clear that $100/t is the minimal floor, not the ceiling, needed now to send a clear unequivocal signal to market.”

He added: “Obviously it will need to be reviewed and ratcheted up quite quickly to meet the price differential between fossil fuels and alternatives. But the change in price with a $100 levy is well within the price fluctuations of existing fuels.”

The world’s biggest container shipping company Maersk has called for a $150 levy on shipping fuel to shift the industry towards green alternatives.

Larger developing countries like China, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia – as well as Russia – said they had concerns about a carbon tax.

The world’s biggest shipping registry, Panama argued a carbon tax could increase transport costs, endanger food security and harm the economy.

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The representative of Vanuatu argued that an increase in the cost of fuel and transport would be passed on to consumers. This would have a disproportionate impact on small-island developing states.

Albon Ishoda told Climate Home News: “In the vast majority of cases, the increase in transport goods for most goods and cargo is highly marginal”.

However, he said, “on a narrow range of cases, especially for countries such as mine, there is a risk of disproportionate negative impact and this will need a mechanism to compensate these situations.

“But we need to work these matters out alongside the development of the measure. As we keep saying we are out of time.”

The proposal will be revisited in November. Also kicked to the next meeting was a more modest proposal, supported by the shipping industry’s trade association and several states, for a levy of $2 a tonne of fuel to fund research and development of clean shipping technology. That translates to a carbon price of $0.64/t.

Most developing countries opposed it while many European and Pacific countries argued it was a distraction from carbon pricing at a high enough level to encourage adoption of cleaner fuels and technologies.

The IMO did agree a package of short term measures to trim ships’ carbon intensity 2% every year between 2023 and 2026.

That works out at an 11% efficiency improvement between 2019 and 2026. The US, UK and most European countries wanted at least a 22% improvement.

Transport and Environment shipping campaigner Faig Abbasov called the IMO’s decision “egregious”, “cosmetic” and “greenwashing”.

According to International Council on Clean Transportation analysis, this trajectory is no better than business as usual. To be compatible with a 1.5C global warming limit, a 6-7% annual reduction in carbon intensity is needed.

The post Pacific islands make lonely case for carbon price on shipping appeared first on Climate Home News.

But things did not go according to plan. First, Iskan crashed one electric sports car into a cliff on a test drive. Then one of his lead engineers, Dasep Ahmadi, was sentenced to seven years in prison for wasting state money, after his EVs were judged not fit for the road.

For several years afters this conviction, Indonesia’s entrepreneurs were too scared to go near the industry, leaving drivers with a choice between polluting domestic models or expensive imported EVs.

“After [Ahmadi’s] case, the research programme relatively stopped”, said Agus Purwadi, an EV researcher at Indonesia’s prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology.

Transport accounts for some 28% of Indonesia’s energy-related greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution kills an estimated 120,000 Indonesians a year. Although most Indonesians still get around by motorbike, demand for cars is booming, particularly in major cities. Just 0.15% of cars sold in Indonesia in 2020 were electric.

“If you walk in [Jakarta] for half an hour you will feel the pollution from the vehicles,” said Julius Adiatma, a Jakarta-based EV researcher at the Institute for Essential Services Reform. “You can see the smoke, from the breathing you can feel it, the smell of the air is not fresh”.

This week, the International Energy Agency said that, if the world is to reach net zero emissions by 2050, then 60% of global car sales should be electric by 2030. Indonesia has a long way to go.

Iskan came to prominence as the football-mad editor of the Java Post in the 1980s, with a reputation for humility and a youthful demeanour which he attributes to the transplant of a 21-year old’s liver.

He gained popularity by prioritising Indonesian, not foreign, football in his newspapers. He paid for the food of his local team’s fans when they travelled to Jakarta for games – and damages when they smashed up trains.

In 2011, after two years running the state electricity company, Iskan was appointed as minister of state enterprises and made it his mission to sponsor the development of a cheap electric vehicle.

One of the men he turned to was 46-year old Dasep Ahmadi. Raised by his mechanic father, Ahmadi had studied mechanical engineering at Indonesia’s prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology and on a scholarship in Germany. He had worked at big car companies and won a national robot-building competition.

In 1998, with southeast Asia shattered by the financial crisis, Ahmadi left a cushy job at Astra to start his own business providing motorbike testing equipment. When Iskan was looking for an electric car builder, his name came up.

Although he admits he once felt “very embarrassed” about driving an electric car, Iskan took such a personal interest that he insisted on test driving the prototype cars himself.

While driving a group of journalists around one of Jakarta’s busiest roundabouts in Ahmadi’s bright green Evina, the car broke down. In a later test drive, it failed to make it up the hill to Bandung.

It could, and did, get worse. While Iskan and one of his engineers were test driving a sporty red electric car at around 70km an hour, he swerved off the road, later blaming brake failure.

The prototype Tuxuci, which had been developed at Iskan’s request, crashed into an electricity pylon, wrecking the car. The minister emerged unscathed: “Not even blisters,” he said. He claimed he would rather be used as a guinea pig for new technology than let the general public take the risk.

https://twitter.com/agusjurnalis/status/287541326097031169

The incident did not put him off electric vehicles. A few months later, Iskan persuaded three state-owned enterprises to sponsor the construction of sixteen of Ahmadi’s electric vehicles to ferry world leaders around the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in Bali.

The cars were supposed to advertise the new Indonesia to visiting bigshots like Xi Jinping and John Kerry. They were home-made, modern and (both literally and figuratively) green.

But they never made it to the summit. The attorney general’s office later said their brakes were too strong, their rims too wide, their engines over-heated when they tried to go uphill and they were too similar to the Toyota Alphard.

Prosecutors said Ahmadi’s car was too similar to the Toyota Alphard. (Photo: M93/Wikimedia)

The cars were donated to Indonesian universities to help in their research. In most countries, this would be classed as a promising start or, at worst, a failed experiment. Tesla, the pioneering American company founded by Elon Musk, took five years to release its first car.

But Indonesia has a law against causing kerugian negara, a financial loss to the nation. So, after a change in government, Ahmadi was arrested and detained at the attorney general’s office in July 2015.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of RP200m ($14,000). Iskan, now an ex-minister, was also questioned by investigators and his old ministry office was raided although he was not convicted.

Ahmadi and his lawyer Vidi Galenso argued the conviction was unfair. At court, Ahmadi told reporters: “We do our best, if there are still shortcomings, that’s normal. But, if this is called a crime, I don’t accept it.” His lawyer Vidi Galenso added: “In research, failure cannot be considered wrongdoing”.

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Ahmadi was supported by prominent commentators too. Indonesian economist Faisal Basri said it would be ridiculous if those behind every project sponsored by state companies were prosecuted for poor performance.

Should the organisers of the Java Jazz festival, which is sponsored by a state bank, be prosecuted if no one turns up to hear the music? Basri asked.

Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa) analyst Elrika Hamdi said several CEOs of state-owned companies had been convicted of corruption “when they were simply making wrong or slightly off-track business decisions”.

“Making a mistake on business decisions should not be equal to corruption,” she said. “But when you do it in a [state owned company], that means (in the Indonesian legal system) you’re causing losses for the state, and that translates to corruption.”

Purwadi suggested there was a political motivation for Ahmadi and Iskan’s persecution. After Joko Widodo was elected president in 2014, Iskan was an ex-minister from an opposition party and Ahmadi was an opposition candidate for the West Java regional parliament.

The effects of Ahmadi’s conviction went beyond the engineer himself. Fear of the same fate, plus the drying up of research funding, put off engineers from trying to develop Indonesia’s answer to Tesla.

A 2018 report by the Jakarta-based Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) found that Indonesia was “still at a very early stage of EV diffusion” and the prospects for EV adoption were “dismal”. EVs were 2-3 times more expensive than fossil fuelled cars, it said, largely because they had to be imported and were subject to import duties.

https://twitter.com/MacoanaBawalipu/status/768824487710117889

Ahmadi’s Indonesian EV was supposed to be priced at IDR 200-300m ($14-21,000) while  Nissan, Hyundai and Toyota EVs cost in the region of IDR 400-700m ($28-49,000).

Putra Adhiguna, an Indonesian energy analyst at Ieefa, said: “The case created a bad precedent for inventors… it tarnished some of the grand ambition.”

To encourage the kind of domestic EV industry that India, China and Malaysia have the government needs to support the industry for decades, he said.

According to Adiatma, the government has taken some measures to address the price difference between electric and fossil fuel cars but these have not gone far enough.

In 2019, the government introduced measures to encourage investment in electric vehicles and battery manufacturing. Despite this, and even if foreign companies avoid import taxes by manufacturing their EVs in Indonesia, Adiatma said an EV would still cost over $30,000 compared to $10-20,000 for a conventional car.

“We need to do something with the conventional cars to make electric cars competitive,” Adiatma said. “The conventional car price is too low”. He proposes a carbon or luxury tax on conventional cars and raising the price of fuel, which state-owned oil company Pertamina regulates.

While Indonesia’s answer to Elon Musk languishes in prison, any government initiative on EVs is greeted with a chorus of scepticism on social media.

Below, in response to president Joko Widodo praising a student EV project, a Twitter user writes: “Hopefully it doesn’t have the same fate as Dasep Ahmadi’s electric car.”

Smoga tidak bernasib seperti mobil listrik Dasep Ahmadi pic.twitter.com/cT6QwRjvAZ

— Abuzhafir (@budiagani) December 20, 2017

In 2019, the government posted a “fact check”, claiming that an article titled “only in Indonesia, electric car creator imprisoned for 7 years” was “disinformation”. But it did not refute the basic facts of the case.

Indonesian ministers are weighing up scenarios for reaching net zero emissions between 2045 and 2070 and the country’s biggest utility has pledged to stop building new coal plants.

As the country’s electricity system gets greener, the climate benefits of EVs increase. IESR’s research found that an ambitious EV transition could do 6% of the emissions reduction necessary to change a 3C global warming trajectory to 1.5C.

Sadly for Indonesia though, the companies who cash in on this EV transition are likely to be foreign giants like Hyundai and the price of these foreign cars will mean the transition is slower than the melting polar ice caps and Indonesian lungs would like.

The post With Indonesia’s answer to Elon Musk in jail, electric vehicles are going nowhere appeared first on Climate Home News.

But it also took the crisis of this major trade artery getting blocked for almost a week for us to simply notice the vast ships underpinning our modern consumer lifestyles.

The Suez Canal crisis is not just a story of delayed goods and revenue loss — it is also a story of a heavily polluting industry growing at a pace that is inconsistent with the limits of a liveable planet.

In the quest to bring us the goods we want ever more cheaply, shipping has pushed harder to reach economies of scale, and container ships have assumed absurd, gargantuan proportions.

As recently as 2007, the biggest container ship in the world carried 8,000 containers. The Ever Given — finally freed on Monday from the bank of the Suez Canal — carries over 20,000 containers. Some ships are now close to 25,000.

It’s not just the size of the ships; the world’s fleet has quadrupled in size since the 1980s. That’s increased the strain on our oceans by exacerbating underwater noise levels, harming whales and dolphins. It has caused the rise of plastic waste dumping, oil discharge and the shuttle of invasive species around the globe, causing the extinction of native plants and marine animals.

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Today there are around 60,000 ships carrying 11 billion tonnes of cargo every year — around 80% of world trade.

Most of everything we own – clothes, shoes, food, technology – at one points sits on a giant container ship like the Ever Given that rose to fame last week.

Every single one of these ships in operation runs on fossil fuels, but not just your everyday petrol or diesel. Container ships run on the world’s cheapest, dirtiest liquid fossil fuel – known as “heavy fuel oil”.

This is the gunky black tar-like substance that comes out the bottom of an oil refinery once all the transparent road fuels like gasoline and diesel have been separated out.

Heavy fuel oil contains up to 500 times as much cancer-causing sulphur dioxide than the legal maximum allowed in road fuels.

Sometimes even chemical waste and melted car tires, that companies don’t want to pay to dispose of safely, are just blended into shipping fuel.

Out of sight, out of mind, shipping companies have enjoyed a free pass to pollute for decades.

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Even after somewhat improved sulphur standards finally came into effect in 2020, decades after equivalent rules for power plants, shipping’s dirty air pollution is still linked to 250,000 deaths and 6.4 million childhood asthma cases every year — just the cost of doing business, apparently.

Meanwhile, shipping continues to emit one billion tons of climate-heating greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. That’s more than all but the top five largest emitting countries in the world, we just never talk about it. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s right — governments typically exclude shipping emissions from their climate action plans, pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

And in case anyone’s worried about emissions from Evergreen ships like these, carrying our stuff from outsourced factories, don’t be! Emissions from intl aviation and shipping are excluded from our statistics. So in theory, they don’t exist. It feels better that way, doesn’t it? pic.twitter.com/X8ZAaMDNN2

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) March 28, 2021

Just like other sectors, shipping is capable of running on renewable energy — there are over 100 pilot projects for zero-emission shipping underway. But consumers and governments have not yet demanded that ships make this energy transition.

The shipping industry is in bed with the fossil fuel industry (40% of the sector’s global cargo consist of coal, oil, and fossil gas) so transitioning ships off fossil fuels will require sustained pressure, action, and outrage.

There are signs of change. One shipping industry executive blew the whistle in 2017, expressing his “contempt and disgust” at the lobbyists being paid to weaken and prevent any environmental regulation.

Maybe the rare public attention on the shipping sector resulting from this Suez Canal crisis will spur enough of us to ask ourselves and our governments to finally steer shipping onto a sustainable path.

In concrete terms, two of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, the low-lying Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands in the Pacific, earlier this month submitted a ground-breaking proposal to the UN’s International Maritime Organisation: to apply a global carbon price of $100/mt to the shipping industry, to pay for its upgrade to cleaner, zero-carbon fuels.

For those of us working from home, enjoying cheap home delivery of goods produced on the other side of the world, it’s the least we can do to ask our governments to support it.

Madeline Rose is the climate campaign director for Pacific Environment, an environmental group with consultative status at the International Maritime Organization.

The post It took the Suez Canal crisis to highlight the scale of the polluting shipping sector appeared first on Climate Home News.

The post How the shipping industry can halve climate-warming black carbon in the Arctic appeared first on Climate Home News.

The oil spill has been described as one of the worst ecological disasters ever to hit the western Indian Ocean. It has devastated the livelihoods of local fishermen and tour operators, who were already struggling to stay afloat due to the coronavirus pandemic, campaigners on the ground say.

Shipping and ocean experts told Climate Home News that the incident has raised serious concerns about the safety of the fuel used on board the Wakashio and its long-term environmental impacts. More vessels could fail and cause marine pollution if the lessons of the disaster are not learned, they warned.

Yet the Mauritian government, Japanese ship owner Nagashiki Shipping and fuel supplier BP are withholding crucial information that could aid clean-up efforts and prevent future shipwrecks.

An envoy from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) downplayed the environmental threat, saying the leaked fuel was “just like skin cream”.

“It begs the question whether the shipping industry is really holding itself to greater accountability on the product that it uses,” Yuvan Beejadhur, a former blue economy expert at the World Bank and coordinator of citizen movements in Mauritius, told Climate Home News.

The fuel

In January 2020, the IMO – the UN body responsible for international shipping – introduced a sulphur cap, banning ships from using marine fuels with a sulphur content above 0.5%.

This measure to protect public health from sulphur oxide emissions led to the oil industry developing a wide range of very low sulphur fuel oils (VLSFOs).

VLSFOs are cheap, blended fuels made from residue oil, the dregs at the bottom of the barrel, and more refined products, such as gasoline or diesel.

When VLSFOs started being used in January 2020, very little was known about them, according to Dr Sian Prior, lead advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance. “Nothing on levels of air pollution when they were burned, nothing on how they reacted if spilled and nothing on the environmental impact,” she told Climate Home News.

In 2020 several studies were published which indicate that VLSFOs are far from green. Although they emit significantly less sulphur when burned than other marine fuels, they cause higher black carbon emissions because they contain a large number of aromatic compounds, according to a study by the German Environment Agency, seen by Climate Home.

Besides the emissions they produce, there are also concerns about how VLSFOs react with water. 

A local volunteer assists with the clean-up of the Wakashio oil spill in Mauritius in August 2020 (Photo: Fawzee Mohamad Barkhut)

Two weeks after the Wakashio grounding, the IMO sent representative Matthew Sommerville to provide technical advice and assist with the clean up. In comments to reporters in Mauritius, Sommerville described the spilled VLSFO as “not really black thick oil… It’s just like skin cream.”

“It goes away. It’s not the end of the world – it cleans. Look how easily it is cleaning off. It could have been a lot worse if it had been a different type of oil,” he said. 

When asked by Climate Home News if the IMO backed this characterisation of VLSFO, spokesperson Nathasha Brown said: “We will wait for the full report to see [if there are] any lessons to be learned.”

Experts disagree with Sommerville’s assessment and say that VLSFO has similar characteristics to traditional heavy fuel oil (HFO), a viscous oil which solidifies quickly in water, making it incredibly difficult to clean up.

A 2020 study by Norwegian marine research institution SINTEF found that VLSFO has a similar composition to HFO when spilled in water. “The oils tested indicate a high degree of persistence on the sea surface,” the SINTEF researchers said, adding that “the oil spill response can be even more challenging” than in the case of traditional fuel oil, such as HFO, particularly in cold water.

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A report seen by Climate Home by the International Standards Organization, which will be discussed at an IMO meeting in March, also classes VLSFO as an HFO based on its density. 

“It can be concluded that the vast majority of VLSFOs would fall under the definition of HFO in the HFO ban approved by MEPC 75,” the report noted, citing the decision by the IMO’s environmental committee in November to restrict HFO use in Arctic waters. 

In late August, a month after the Wakashio ran aground, dead dolphins started washing up on Mauritius’ shores. A spokesperson for the fisheries ministry attributed the deaths to shark attacks, telling Reuters that the dolphins had wounds and blood around their jaws, “no trace of oil however.” Environmental groups called on the government to conduct an autopsy. To date the results of the autopsy remain unknown.

“The dolphins, whales and porpoises that died – it’s still not been explained whether it was caused by sulphur fuel. No results have been communicated,” said Beejadhur. 

Beejadhur said many of the long-term environmental impacts of VLSFO have not been thoroughly assessed, despite the fact that the fuel is now widely used within the industry.

The Wakashio wrecked off the coast of Mauritius (Photo: Fawzee Mohamad Barkhut)

The shipwreck

According to the Wakashio’s owner, Nagashiki, the ship ran aground because the crew was sailing too close to the shore and was not aware of safety procedures. 

“There was a lack of awareness of the dangers of navigating close to the coast… and insufficient implementation of regulations that must be observed in order to safely execute voyages,” the company said in a statement. 

But experts say that VLSFO has been linked to engine wear and could have caused the engine of the Wakashio to fail. No assessment of the condition of the engine has been made public.

Sulphur has some lubricating qualities and if it is removed from the fuel, engines can get stuck, Branko Berlan, the representative for the International Transport Federation at the IMO, told Climate Home News.

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If operators don’t use other acidic lubricants, similar to sulphur, abrasive calcium deposits can build up inside the engine cylinders which could ultimately lead to engine wear or failure, according to a report by fuel testing company Veritas Petroleum Services (VPS), seen by Climate Home. VPS said in May it had identified over 40 ships that had experienced major engine damage since they started using VLSFO in January 2020.

Part of the problem is that operators do not know what type of fuel they are handling and how to ensure it is safe to use on board their ships, according to Berlan. “Exact procedures and involved substances are unknown. You never know what you are receiving as there is no regulation around quality,” he said. 

“Any petroleum-based fuel oil has potential safety risks. Ship engineers and ship masters need to be aware of potential safety issues with the fuel they use and have to manage any risks,” said the IMO’s Brown, adding that safety guidance was issued before ships started using VLSFO.

“Through 2020, and into 2021 to date, [the] IMO has not received any reports of safety issues linked to VLSFO,” Brown said. 

The missing sample

One of the biggest omissions from the investigation into the Wakashio grounding is that fuel from onboard the ship was never tested by independent analysts. 

In September, Mauritius’ ministry of environment said it had asked the Australian Maritime Safety Agency (AMSA) to carry out an independent analysis of a fuel sample from the Wakashio. 

AMSA told Forbes in January that it never received a fuel sample from BP, the oil company that supplied the fuel used by the Wakashio. 

BP said it has analysed the fuel but has not publicly disclosed the chemical composition. 

The fuel on board the Wakashio “fully met the specified standard that is recognised across the international bunkering industry,” BP said in a statement. BP said that the fuel was also tested by Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), a subsidiary of Nagashiki Shipping and the company that chartered the Wakashio.

“MOL raised no concerns about the quality of the oil, nor have the operators of seven other vessels that received the same fuel,” BP said. A spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions about why BP did not supply a sample to AMSA as requested.

Local volunteers made booms to help contain the spilled fuel oil (Photo: Fawzee Mohamad Barkhut)

But experts say much remains unknown about VLSFO and it is critical samples from the Wakashio are analysed to avoid future disasters and help Mauritius recover from this oil spill.

“It’s paramount to know the oil’s chemical composition so you can tailor the best and most successful response. You don’t have an idea of the compounds in there. [They] dictate how toxic [the spill] may be,” according to Chris Reddy, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who has analysed major oil spills, including the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. 

“Knowledge about this spill could help us inform how things may play out in Mauritius,” Reddy told Climate Home News. He and his team analysed a sample of floating fuel residue, collected on 16 August.

“We don’t know if this was a low-sulphur material, but it’s unlike anything we’ve seen spilled before—that alone demands a closer look,” Reddy said after analysing the sample in October.

“We didn’t get the original product from the ship. A sample was collected from the beach and was a week or two old. Based on experience, it changed a little [compared to] the spilled fuel oil.” Reddy told Climate Home News.

Unanswered questions

“Today, uncertainty about Mauritius recovery persists, while no major action has been taken to protect the island’s waters from a future incident,” climate campaigners wrote in an Al Jazeera article this month. 

“No results have been communicated,” said Beejadhur, adding that the IMO and government investigators have had little engagement with local fishermen, whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the oil spill. 

Campaigners are critical of the meagre compensation offered to affected communities. The government set up a “Wakashio solidarity grant” for around 3,000 people, offering them a one-time pay out of Rs 20,000 ($500), according to activist group Rezistans ek Alternativ.

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According to maritime law, the ship owner is responsible for damage caused by an oil spill. That means Nagashiki Shipping is liable. Nagashiki said in July that it would “deal with compensation claims based on applicable laws”.

Due to a technicality, that compensation could be capped at $18 million, regardless of the scale of the damage.

To date no payout has been made and it remains unclear how far the compensation negotiations have progressed. Mauritius’ ministry of the blue economy, marine resources, fisheries and shipping did not respond to Climate Home’s questions regarding the insurance claim.

Mauritians worry that they will be left to deal with the recovery from the devastating oil spill themselves. 

“The saddest fact is if we go back to normal and people forget about the Wakashio crisis,” said Beejadhur.

The post Mauritius oil spill: questions mount over ship fuel safety appeared first on Climate Home News.

Plans for a third runway had stalled after the Court of Appeal ruled in February that the expansion was unlawful because, among other reasons, it failed to consider the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The Supreme Court overturned the ban and ruled that Heathrow’s expansion strategy was not illegal, stating that the Paris Agreement does not qualify as UK government policy. 

Tim Crosland, a lawyer at Plan B, which brought the case along with Friends of the Earth, described it as a “really dreadful ruling”.

“We have so many documents from the UK government saying that the Paris Agreement is the lynchpin of policy on climate change and that we were the ones that were instrumental in securing it,” he told Climate Home.

In his anger at the verdict, Crosland broke an embargo to reveal the outcome on Tuesday, at risk of being held in contempt of court.

EU urged to address aviation’s full climate impact, including non-CO2 emissions

Campaigners plan to appeal the ruling in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where they will argue that increasing aviation emissions is inconsistent with the right to life. 

Despite the ruling, Heathrow still faces major obstacles to carry out its expansion plans. The airport may now seek planning permission, but could struggle to convince a public enquiry that increasing aviation demand is compatible with the UK’s 2050 net zero target, campaigners say.

“This judgment is no ‘green light’ for expansion. With ever stronger climate policy commitments that Heathrow must meet, it remains unlikely it will ever get planning permission for the third runway,” said Will Rundle, head of legal at Friends of the Earth.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) advised this month that if the UK is to meet its 2050 net zero goal, it will have to reduce its overall aviation emissions. There is no net airport growth in its net zero scenario, meaning Heathrow expansion would have to be offset by capacity reductions elsewhere.

“Heathrow expansion means 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, just from UK aviation, by 2050. They have to explain how that is consistent with the UK 2050 net zero target,” said Crosland. 

Aviation is likely to be the UK’s highest emitting sector by 2050, as it is hard to decarbonise, according to the CCC.

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Heathrow emits around 19 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than half of UK aviation emissions. A third runway would add a projected 9 million tonnes to the airport’s total annual CO2 output.

Aviation demand projections have been thrown into uncertainty by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which forced airline to ground planes for much of 2020.

Without political will, the expansion plans are unlikely to happen, Friends of the Earth previously told Climate Home. Prime minister Boris Johnson, whose constituency is close to Heathrow, has been an outspoken critic of a third runway in the past.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said in a statement: “Now the ball is in the government’s court, it’s hard to imagine Boris Johnson wanting to resurrect a project that makes no business or environmental sense. With a UK-hosted climate summit just a year away, the government should draw a line under this sorry saga.”

Sauven called for a frequent flyer levy to curb demand and investment in broadband to encourage video conferencing instead of business flights.

A spokesperson for Heathrow said: “Heathrow airport has already committed to net zero and this ruling recognises the robust planning process that will require us to prove expansion is compliant with the UK’s climate change obligations, including the Paris Climate Agreement, before construction can begin.”

The post UK Supreme Court lifts ban on Heathrow airport third runway  appeared first on Climate Home News.

The aviation sector’s climate impact is three times bigger than the effect of its carbon dioxide emissions alone, according to a study by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (Easa), the EU’s aviation regulator, commissioned by the European Commission.

The study endorses findings published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, showing that non-CO2 emissions from planes such as of oxides of nitrogen (NOx), soot particles, sulphate aerosols, and water vapour at high altitude together drive significant global heating.

Current EU policies to curb the aviation sector’s growing emissions only take into account carbon dioxide emissions.

The EU estimates direct carbon emissions from aviation account for nearly 4% of the bloc’s total CO2 emissions. But when considering non-CO2 emissions, aviation is likely playing a much bigger role in the EU’s contribution to rising temperatures globally.

Campaigners at Transport & Environment (T&E) say the study is an acknowledgment by the European Commission that the aviation sector’s full impact on warming needs to be addressed — 12 years after it started to consider the issue.

As UN action on ship emissions falls short, attention turns to regions

“It confirms that carbon emissions are only the tip of the iceberg when accounting for aviation’s climate impact,” said Jo Dardenne, aviation manager at T&E. “It’s the first time the EU regulator addresses the issue.”

While collectively planes’ non-CO2 emissions have a net warming impact on the planet, individually they have varying warming and cooling effects, the extent of which remains uncertain. The mass grounding of flights during the coronavirus pandemic handed scientists a rare chance to study plane-free skies and understand how far aviation stokes global warming.

In a note to the EU Parliament accompanying the report, the Commission stated the study “fully confirmed” previous estimates that non-C02 impacts were “at least as important” as CO2 emissions in contributing to warming.

It added the findings “needed to be addressed” in line with the EU’ climate objectives but it stressed that “the complexity of non-CO2 climate impacts relative to CO2 ones and the trade-offs between various impacts, poses a challenge” to policy responses.

Potential policy measures  included the creation of a levy on planes’ NOx emissions and the possible inclusion of these emissions under the EU’s trading scheme. The mandatory use of sustainable aviation fuel and operational measures, such as optimising flight trajectories to avoid the formation of contrails, were also recommended.

These measures would take at least five to eight years to be implemented if “there is political will”, the report said.

Coronavirus: plane-free skies spur research into warming impact of aviation

Dardenne told Climate Home the EU could not afford to wait eight years to act on the issue and urged the Commission to include policies in its Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, due next month, which will set its vision for the transport sector for the next decade.

The Commission, she said, “shouldn’t waste any more time in implementing the solutions that are available today”.

Bill Hemmings, an independent consultant based in Brussels, said the Commission’s three-page note to Parliament and emphasis on the complexity of the sector’s climate impact was “yet another example of policymakers seeking to avoid acknowledging a very inconvenient truth”.

“It would be foolish not to recognise that the issues around aviation’s climate impacts at altitude remain complex and uncertain,” he said, but “there are strong arguments now to advance this work as quickly as possible… despite many lost years.”

The latest report is nearly a year late. The Commission was expected to present aviation’s non-CO2 effects and possible policy measures to address them by January 2020, in response to pressure from European lawmakers to reflect the aviation’s full climate impact in the emissions trading scheme.

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This was not the first time the European Parliament had pressed the Commission on the issue.

In 2008, it led to the publication of a study commissioned by the EU Commission’s transport department exploring policy options to reduce the climate impact of NOx emissions. The study made six policy recommendations but concluded three to five more years of research were needed to strength the scientific understanding.

Hemmings accused the Commission of having left the 2008 report to “gather dust on a shelf”.

He called on the EU to reflect aviation’s full warming impact in its greenhouse gas emissions inventories, to inform how much action the EU needs to take to achieve its 2050 climate neutrality goal.

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Last week the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) was accused of “kicking the can 10 years down the road” after it approved two measures that campaigners say fall far short of the ambition needed.

The UN body responsible for international shipping approved a “meaningless” ban on the use of heavy fuel oil in Arctic waters and a package of energy efficiency measures that is projected to shave just 1% off shipping emissions this decade.

“What we have seen is a real dereliction of duty from the IMO. We are in an emergency,” said Diane Gilpin, CEO of the Smart Green Shipping Alliance, an organisation that develops technological solutions to help the shipping industry decarbonise.

It now falls to governments and the industry to curb ship emissions in the next decade. Despite efforts by major companies, such as Danish shipping giant Maersk, to trial new technology and more sustainable fuels, industry-wide progress is slow.

“We have all the technology we need but we don’t have access to funding,” said Gilpin. One problem is the ship owner bears the cost of efficiency improvements but does not directly benefit, as fuel bills are typically paid by the company chartering the vessel. Another is that banks are hesitant to fund immature technology.

“We need to be introducing a carbon price and it needs to be realistic. It would demonstrate to investors that their high-risk investment will be rewarded and that the carbon we are saving is reflected in the value,” said Gilpin. 

A carbon price on bunker fuel is under consideration at the IMO. Last week’s meeting initiated talks on a mandatory levy of $2 per tonne of fuel to fund research and development projects worth $5bn over the next decade. Many EU countries were supportive of the proposal, but China, Russia and the US expressed concerns about funding and the levy’s impact on shipowners operating in remote regions.

Those negotiations could take years. Meanwhile, there is scope for national and regional authorities to crack down on polluting ships. Here we outline what the EU, the US and China are doing to tackle rising shipping emissions.

What are major shipping hubs doing to reduce emissions?

Including shipping in regional carbon markets is one effective way to accelerate decarbonisation. In September, the EU parliament voted to include maritime CO2 emissions in its emissions trading scheme (ETS) – the world’s biggest carbon market – from 2022, following criticism that shipping is the only sector to not face emissions reduction targets.

Shipping experts say that schemes similar to the ETS may be introduced in other regions over the next decade. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see regional shipping carbon markets in North America and east Asia in the next ten years,” Bryan Comer, senior marine researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), told Climate Home News.

The EU

From 2022, shipowners will be forced to buy carbon permits to cover emissions during voyages in Europe and international voyages that start or finish at a European port, under a regulation to be adopted early next year. 

The EU is a major shipping hub, with ships transporting 75% of external trade and 36% of internal trade, according to the European Commission. 

The inclusion of shipping emissions in the ETS “will provide a huge incentive for the fleet to take this issue more seriously,” according to Gilpin. 

The EU parliament is set to propose legislation next year that mandates the use of sustainable marine fuels on ships calling at European ports.

The Fuel EU Maritime regulation would be the first transport mandate of its kind as it targets users, rather than fuel suppliers and manufacturers, according to Faig Abbasov, shipping programme director at Brussels-based think-tank Transport & Environment.

“If the mandate were on suppliers, ships would simply bunker [refuel] outside the EU. But if it is a mandate on EU journeys, then there is no risk of evasion,” said Abbasov.

The US

The US is considering introducing an emissions monitoring, reporting and verification programme for ships entering US ports. “That’s the first step towards controlling emissions from those ships,” said Comer. 

In the past the US has shown little leadership when it comes to reducing shipping emissions, often siding with countries pushing for low enforcement, such as Japan and Norway, said Abbasov.

Shipping observers hope that the US will ramp up its climate ambition when Joe Biden takes the presidency in January. In his climate platform, Biden pledged to “lead the world to lock in enforceable international agreements to reduce emissions in global shipping and aviation.” Some clean shipping groups are calling on Biden to introduce a cap-and-trade program, similar to the EU’s ETS, which requires large emitters to buy permits for their greenhouse gas emissions, said Abbasov.

“Biden’s climate ambition for shipping will be measured by national or regional schemes, similar to those in the EU. A true climate leader cannot afford outsourcing everything to international organisations. Genuine climate leadership starts at home,” he said.

Other options for the Biden administration include a carbon tax, a low-emissions standard or a zero emissions regulation for ships while they are docked in US ports, according to Comer. 

In the US, California is leading the way on reducing shipping pollution. California requires all ships to use low-sulphur fuels instead of scrubbers, which dump acidic water and heavy metals into the sea, according to Comer. The state introduced a cap-and-trade scheme in 2012, but this does not cover shipping emissions. “It may be possible to bring ships under the cap-and-trade programme,” said Comer. 

China 

China has been monitoring air pollution from ships since 2016 when it established a domestic emission control area (DECA) at the Shanghai and Yangtze River Delta ports. It was later rolled out at other key ports across the country. To comply with DECA regulations, all ships docking at these ports must switch to a low-sulphur fuel, which contains 80% less sulphur than standard marine fuels, according to Freda Fung, a consultant for the Asia green shipping programme at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

These regulations are driven by health rather than climate concerns. Sulphur dioxide has been linked to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Rather than contributing to global warming, sulphur dioxide reflects sunlight back into space and therefore has a cooling effect on the atmosphere.

Local governments in Shenzhen and Guangzhou are offering ship owners incentives, such as grants, to encourage them to retrofit existing ships with electric or liquefied natural gas propulsion and have invested heavily in onshore power infrastructure at seaports, Fung told Climate Home News.

China has introduced several regional carbon markets in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and plans to launch a national carbon trading scheme in the next five years. Following the first phase which will focus on emissions from the power sector, the scheme will be extended to cover seven further sectors, including the petrochemical and steel industries as well as domestic aviation.

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Countries approved the proposal during an environmental committee meeting of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) – the UN body responsible for international shipping – on Friday.

The decision came several days after countries attending the IMO meeting agreed to a controversial package of energy efficiency measures. Campaigners say both measures fall far short of both the IMO and Paris Agreement goals to reduce emissions and limit global warming.

Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the US proposed the ban to protect the fragile Arctic region from oil spills.

HFO has been banned in Antarctic waters since 2011, but plans for similar restrictions in the Arctic have been met with resistance, mainly from Russia. Opponents inserted a host of exemptions and waivers that weakened the rule.

“What was approved today allows ships to continue using HFO in the Arctic until July 2029,” Bryan Comer, senior marine researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), told Climate Home News.

“Unfortunately IMO member states decided to delay implementation until July 2024, and to forge ahead with a regulation that actually guarantees that ships can use HFO in the Arctic for the rest of the decade, rather than banning it,” said Comer.

Russia resists tougher climate targets in dash for Arctic gas

If the newly approved ban had been in place in 2019, around 75% of ships running on HFO would have been allowed to continue using the fuel in the Arctic, according to a study published by the ICCT in September.

Between 2015-2019, HFO use increased by 75%, according to the ICCT study. If the fleet continues to grow, the numbers of oil tankers and bulk carriers that qualify for an exemption would increase “and the effectiveness of the ban would be further eroded,” Comer and his co-authors warned. 

“The IMO have chosen to kick the can 10 years down the road,” John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition and senior policy advisor at Seas at Risk, told Climate Home. 

“They are good at creating the impression that they are doing something, but when you look closely, you discover that it is not going to change for years,” he said. 

In a speech to meeting attendees, Maggs stressed that it was misleading to refer to the new policy as a ban.

“It will inevitably cause widespread confusion, with the wider world assuming that a ‘ban’ stops HFO being used in the Arctic when actually in the mouth of the IMO it only means a modest and likely temporary reduction in its use for the first ten years,” he said. 

Anger as UN body approves deal that allows ship emissions to rise to 2030

“There are so many caveats in the ban, it is basically meaningless,” Dr Sian Prior, lead advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, which campaigns to ban HFO in the Arctic, told Climate Home News. 

All ships with a protected fuel tank located inside the double hull are automatically exempt and any bearing the flag of one of the five Arctic coastal states can apply for a waiver, Prior said.

In a concession to Russia, the IMO allowed Arctic coastal nations to apply for a waiver when operating in their own waters. Russia argued that a complete ban would “negatively impact the local communities and industries of the region” who rely on ships to receive food, fuel and goods. In 2019, 366 ships would have been eligible for a waiver, including 325 bearing Russian flags, according to the ICCT.

The regulation does not include any concrete measures to tackle black carbon pollution, said Prior. When burned, HFO emits black carbon – a pollutant that absorbs sunlight and traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. It will only lead to a 5% reduction in black carbon emissions, according to the ICCT study. 

Oil spills pose another serious environmental concern. If HFO ends up in the water, it is extremely difficult to clean up. “HFO is very heavy and forms an emulsion in water – you end up with 10 times the volume,” said Prior. 

“The IMO is treading water: delaying action will not make the climate emergency magically disappear,” said Greenpeace oceans campaigner Veronica Frank. “In a year where a global pandemic made us question our relationship with the natural world and a massive oil spill has turned into the worst environmental disaster in Mauritius, what further evidence does the International Maritime Organisation need to move the shipping sector away from fossil fuels?”

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