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BRUSSELS — In an era when industries are competing to shrink their carbon footprints, shipping has charted a slower course.
Shipping is less visible to the public compared with airlines and smokestack industries, making it less exposed to calls for regulation. Shipping also carries about 90 percent of global trade at rates of efficiency already far higher than most ground and air transport.
Yet emissions from shipping have soared in the past three decades as global trade has expanded, and that is upping the pressure on the industry to make improvements and to start compensating for its annual emissions, which the International Maritime Organization said might be as much as 1,260 million tons of carbon dioxide. That equates to 3.9 percent of the global output of carbon dioxide — or higher than the carbon footprint for aviation.
The I.M.O., which is a U.N. agency that sets rules for the maritime industry, has publicized a much lower figure of 2.7 percent. But that leaves out shipping along national coastlines and a margin of error of as much as 20 percent in its calculations.
At the start of this year, Connie Hedegaard, the E.U. commissioner for climate action, warned the 169 countries that are members of the I.M.O. that they would “have to speed up compared to what they used to do earlier on” to tackle their carbon footprint.
She pledged to impose regulations — possibly in the form of a trading system or a mandatory carbon levy — if the industry failed to come up with a plan to reduce its emissions by the end of next year.
Complete story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/business/energy-environment/06iht-green.html?_r=1
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