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China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa want developing nations excluded from rules designed to cut the 870 million metric tons of carbon emitted by ships every year.
The United Nations' International Maritime Organization meets from July 11 to set the emissions standards that may apply from 2013. Developing nations should either be exempt from those rules for five years or be assigned half the targets until 2021, the three countries said in a proposal last month to the IMO, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg.
International shipping accounts for about 2.7 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, making it the most efficient form of mass transport, the London-based IMO said in a report in 2009. About 90 percent of global trade moves by sea, the Round Table of International Shipping Associations estimates. Owners are considering liquefied natural gas as an alternative to the heavy fuel oil they currently use to power ships.
"What's at stake is the ability of the IMO to regulate carbon," said Simon Bennett, external affairs director for the London-based International Chamber of Shipping, whose members represent 80 percent of the global fleet. "If not adopted on a uniform basis, we stand to have chaos because you will have different standards applying to different ships depending on where they are registered."
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