Freight forwarders and shippers will have to get used to higher costs as the leading powers that be push the maritime industry to redouble efforts to completely decarbonise ocean freight by 2050.
Previously, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) had set a target for current levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) to be halved by 2050.
However, last week Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, announced at the United Nation’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow that the current IMO target should be changed to a zero-emissions restriction within the same timeframe.
She was joined by the UK and the United States in announcing that pressure would be applied on the IMO to accede to this recommendation.
IMO secretary general Kitack Lim told British supply chain portal, The Loadstar, that more rapid decarbonisation wasn’t only necessary but that an urgent debate on the matter would be held before the conference ended on Friday.
Also adding his weight to the call for the stepped-up stripping of GHGs out of liner emissions was US diplomat, John Kerry.
According to the climate envoy, if the maritime industry was a country it would be the world’s eighth-largest air polluter.
Undoubtedly, forcing carriers to meet such a target would come at a huge cost to lines as they adapt current fleets and order advanced newbuilds to meet a zero-emissions target in the next 28 years.
There’s no getting around it though.
Loadstar journalist Nick Saviddes, reporting from Glasgow, said the urgency for real progress against global warming was going to increase.
He said: “The feeling at COP26 is that there is no turning back; there is no time for obfuscation.”
At a time of spiralling freight rates because of the wider impact of Covid-19 on ocean freight, he added that although rates were expected to come down, “freight forwarders and shippers will have to acclimatise to higher costs because decarbonisation will have a cost.
“That’s what they need to get ready for and also to have shorter supply chains and possibly more of them so that you have some kind of redundancy in your supply.”
Of course there was an immediate reaction from the liner industry to Frederiksen’s announcement.
Generally it is felt that alternative fuels such as ammonia and green hydrogen are too expensive and their availability not secure.
Electrically powered ships, at this stage, are also not a global option.
And although liquid natural gas (LNG) is an expensive alternative many lines have already embraced, LNG found itself in the crosshairs of climate activists attending COP26, who claimed that it was a methane emitter, accounting for up to 30% of current GHG levels.
What to do then?
Big exporting retailers such as Walmart and Ikea told a COP26 panel that they were on track towards reaching zero-emission sustainability goals. Maersk, incidentally, was part of the same discussion, stating that a zero-emissions future was indeed possible.
For the most part, adapting liner fleets to comply with a zero-emissions target will be a very costly exercise and, for some, not a feasible option.
Saviddes said when he asked Henriette Thygesen, AP Moller-Maersk CEO for fleet and strategic brands, whether other lines should also ditch LNG as they have done, her answer was a curt but emphatic “yes!”
