Marine Shipping Emissions Mitigation - Pew Center on Global Climate Change

Posted - April 2010 - Pew Center on Global Climate Change

Quick Facts

* The global marine shipping sector is responsible for approximately 1.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic sources.
* Under “business-as-usual” conditions, emissions from the global shipping fleet are expected to double by 2050.
* Shipping’s greenhouse gas emissions could be curtailed through changes in operational practices, improving the fuel efficiency of ships, and burning lower-carbon fuels. Combined together, these changes could reduce shipping emissions by 62 percent below “business-as-usual” projections in 2050, which would mean emissions would stay at roughly current levels despite very large increases in shipping volume by mid-century.
* The international dimension of global shipping complicates policy efforts to reduce emissions. Working with and through transnational actors will be an essential step to forging meaningful, global regulations.

Background

Marine shipping—both domestic and international—plays a vital part in the globalized world, moving goods both within and between countries. Demand for global shipping has steadily risen to transport goods between markets as international trade has increased. From 2000 to 2007, the volume (in tons) of world merchandise exports increased an average of 5.5 percent per year (nearly twice as fast as world GDP), with over 80 percent of that trade volume moved via ship.1,2 Figure 1 shows the composition of world seaborne trade in terms of ton-miles of shipping. While low-value, high-volume merchandise categories dominate the seaborne trade in terms of volume, the World Trade Organization (WTO) estimates that manufactured goods account for more than 70 percent of the total value of world merchandise trade.3....
http://www.pewclimate.org/technology/factsheet/MarineShipping