The Ocean Conservancy published a new report, ‘Zero-Carbon for Shipping’ at the UN Climate Week in New York, highlighting insufficient action by the global shipping industry to address the climate crisis. Weakly regulated and currently off-course to fall well short climate targets needed to stay within the 1.5 degree Celsius target required (achieving less than 25% of the needed ambition in action).
Pathways have been proposed in the report to transition from a heavy dependency on fossil fuels to alternative fuels, but the question remains - why hasn’t global shipping been moving swiftly enough?
Not all greenhouse gases are being evaluated by the IMO, and now, in accordance with analysis by the International Council on Clean Transport, "Methane, which traps 86 times more heat in the atmosphere than the same amount of CO2 over a 20-year time period, represents a small but rapidly growing share of greenhouse gas emissions from shipping. The 150% growth in methane emissions from 2012 to 2018 was largely due to a surge in the number of ships fueled by liquefied natural gas (LNG)".
For additional details on the findings of the Ocean Conservancy's report and other UN Climate Week updates, please visit the link below: