EU talks tough on shipping emissions - hellenicshippingnews.com

Posted - Monday, 02 May 2011 - Hellenic Shipping News "Dot" com

The European Union has used a high-level climate and energy summit to send a new warning shot across the bows of the international maritime industry and its regulator that it is losing patience on the sector’s efforts to implement a programme of greenhousegas emissions reductions in international shipping.
Brussels hosted the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate this week, bringing together the world’s 17 biggest emitters, both developed and developing nations and including the US, China, India, EU, Brazil, Russia and Japan. The aim was to continue dialogue on an intractable issue of a global agreement to reduce climate changing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.
While the meeting made clear that reaching a legally binding climate agreement was not possible in 2011, EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard signalled that this would not stop the EU pushing forward on rules for ships and planes this year. The two sectors were ignored at UNFCCC climate talks in Cancun last December. Hedegaard said this week that the Durban meeting must make progress on these high-emitting transport sectors that lie largely outside the jurisdiction of individual nations.
The EU’s plainly stated position is that if the IMO or the UNFCCC don’t come up with a global regulation for maritime GHG emissions by the end of 2011, then it will act to implement its own emissions caps on international shipping in its region. That regulation is expected to see shipping being included in the existing EU emissions trading scheme.
"It is not enough for Durban just to implement what was agreed in Cancun," she said. "Inclusion of shipping and aviation, these kind of topics we will also push for." Hedegaard said the EU’s preference is for shipping emissions to be tackled by the UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO), but would not wait forever. "Since 1997, IMO has had this task, without delivering, and that's why we are very clearly signalling we are losing patience," she said.
US climate negotiator Todd Stern suggested a softer approach would come Washington on shipping and aviation; that they be given more time to negotiate their own emissions reduction agreements.

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