Shipping "should be brought into EU ETS"

2270, 26/02/07

Bringing shipping into the EU emission trading scheme (EU ETS) would be the best way to address its carbon dioxide output, according to an expert report published by the European commission.

Along with aviation, international shipping is currently excluded from emission targets under the Kyoto protocol.  The report assesses alternative policies that could be used to target the sector's greenhouse gas impacts.

Adding shipping to the EU ETS would be the only way to cap the sector's overall climate impact, the report concludes.  This would also give ship owners flexibility and would be practical to implement and enforce.  Nevertheless, new allowance allocation methods would have to be developed.

Alternatively, the report suggests, the EU could require CO2-linked harbour dues.  Or it could set a CO2 emissions cap on all ships calling at EU ports.  These would be as environmentally effective as trading, says the report.

In any of these three cases, a practical obstacle remains: how to evaluate shipping CO2 emissions.  Another part of the report begins to address this issue.  It reviews and builds on work by done by the International maritime organisation (IMO) to develop an index that measures ships' CO2 emissions per tonne-kilometre or similar measure of work performed.

The EU study adds lots of new data on actual ships, but it says more data still is needed to derive average indices for all ship categories in the world fleet.

Two more segments of the report aim to improve implementation of a marine fuel sulphur directive passed by the EU in 2005 (EED 13/04/05 http://www.endseuropedaily.com/18581).  One reviews different compliance options with a view to alerting ship owners to requirements and retrofit possibilities, and giving member states guidance on enforcement.

The other study is a technical analysis of sulphur abatement technologies called scrubbers.  It will be used by the EU to proposescrubber approval criteria.  The study notes that although six scrubber development projects have been underway since 1990, the technology is still not commercially available because such criteria do not exist.

Follow-up: European commission http://ec.europa.eu/index_en.htm, tel: +32 2 299 1111,

report http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/pdf/transport/final_report.pdf

and EU shipping webpages http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/transport.htm#3.