Global-warming radar catches ships

The forthcoming EU maritime policy should tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector, according to a report to be discussed by the European Parliament next Tuesday (10 July).

Maritime transport accounts for 4-5% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the world today, the report says, compared with 2% from aeroplanes. But until now, political attention on the link between aviation and climate change has overshadowed concerns that emissions of CO2 from shipping could almost double over the next 20 years.

"Measures must be taken to make maritime transport less damaging to the environment and the climate," the report from German Socialist MEP Willi Piecyk says. Piecyk argues that while the original maritime green paper, published by the European Commission in June 2006, "deals only briefly with climate policy", any future maritime policy should pay particular attention to climate change.

He points out that maritime emissions are not covered by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and that ships are also a source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.

The report suggests including ship emissions in the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), increasing the use of renewable fuels and developing more efficient technologies to reduce emissions.

The Commission green paper started talks on the best way to involve all maritime interest groups, from fishermen and ship companies to environmentalists and tourist boards, in a single maritime strategy. A communication and action plan are expected to follow the green paper on 10 October.

Portugal has made the policy a priority for its six-month EU presidency and will host two conferences on maritime affairs, on 9 July and 22 October.

Parliament faced six months of internal arguments over which committee should be responsible for the maritime policy, before putting the transport committee in charge. But the report was put together by a working group of the fisheries, environment, research and regional policy committees, led by Piecyk and the transport committee.

In its contribution to the report, the environment committee "urges the Commission to propose legislation in order to effectively reduce maritime greenhouse gas emissions".

A spokeswoman for the Commission’s fisheries and maritime affairs department said that climate change would "certainly be one of the areas which would form an ideal candidate for action under the maritime policy".

Saskia Richartz of Greenpeace, an environmental group, said that the impact of shipping on climate change had been ignored historically because, if emissions were measured in terms of the vehicle’s weight, ships were more efficient than aeroplanes. "Shipping has been hidden slightly in a ‘green transport’ niche, but it is now coming into the spotlight," Richartz said.

But Alfons Guinier of the European Community Shipowners’ Associations (ECSA) said that Parliament’s estimate of CO2 emissions from shipping was out of date. "MEPs should get their facts right," Guinier said. "The Stern report on climate change put shipping emissions at 2% of the global total," he said, referring to a report published by UK economist Nicholas Stern last October.

"Of course that is no reason for complacency," he added. "We are looking into ways of further improving our performance."

ECSA and the Commission are both looking into several options for reducing ship emissions.

These include a change of fuel, engine improvements, rating ships according to their CO2 emissions and the possibility of bringing shipping into the ETS.

The Commission’s environment department has said that it supports emissions trading for ships but will need to look at the details before making any recommendations in a review of the ETS, due at the end of the year.

The forthcoming EU maritime policy should tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector, according to a report to be discussed by the European Parliament next Tuesday (10 July).