Over 150 industry players join call to action for shipping decarbonization

More than 150 industry leaders and organisations have urged governments and global shipping industry leaders to commit to decarbonizing international shipping by 2050.

The Call to Action initiative was developed by the Getting to Zero Coalition, a partnership between the Global Maritime Forum, the World Economic Forum, and Friends of Ocean Action.

Signatories include members from the entire maritime ecosystem including shipping, chartering, finance, ports, and fuel production. The initiative will be delivered to world governments in November 2021, ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).

“Shipping must align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal and be run entirely on net-zero energy sources by 2050. The private sector is leading the way and taking concrete actions to make zero emission vessels and fuels the default choice by 2030, and decisive government action and enabling policy frameworks are needed now to reach our 2030 and 2050 ambitions,” industry leaders pointed out.

The signatories for the Call to Action have urged governments to:

• Commit to decarbonizing international shipping by 2050;
• Support industrial scale zero emission shipping projects through national action;
• Deliver policy measures that will make zero emission shipping the default choice by 2030.

In 2018, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) set an ambition for shipping to reduce its GHG emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 compared to 2008. For maritime leaders this was an important first step, but given technological developments and the latest climate science, it is now time to set a clear target for the shipping industry to be run entirely on net-zero energy sources by 2050, the members added.

The maritime leaders who signed the initiative include industry’s majors such as A.P. Moller – Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Hapag Lloyd, NYK Line, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), X-Press Feeders, oil majors BP and Royal Dutch Shell, and largest ports such as the ports of Rotterdam, London, Antwerp, Gothenburg as well as the Panama Canal Authority.

Last week, British oil and gas company BP and Japanese shipping major NYK Line signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on future fuels and transportation solutions to help industrial sectors, including shipping, decarbonise.

The decarbonisation process was also strongly backed up by Søren Skou, CEO of the world’s biggest container shipping company Maersk who recently called on the UN maritime body to determine the end date for the use of fossil fuels in the shipping industry.