Letter: Brus­sels and IMO are on board to hit net zero goals

We wel­come Wopke Hoek­stra’s com­ments (“EU nom­inee for cli­mate chief wants global fossil fuel taxes”, Report, FT.com, Octo­ber 2) that he wants to explore an inter­na­tional mari­time levy on ships’ green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions on a global basis. Cur­rently, at the UN reg­u­lator for ship­ping, the Inter­na­tional Mari­time Organ­iz­a­tion, there is a pro­posal being dis­cussed by IMO mem­ber states that will do exactly what Hoek­stra set out.

The “Fund & Reward” pro­posal from the Inter­na­tional Cham­ber of Ship­ping is an equit­able meas­ure that will provide funds to reward first movers by redu­cing the “cost gap” inher­ent in using the new zero emis­sion fuels, as well as provid­ing funds for devel­op­ing eco­nom­ies to invest in port infra­struc­ture and people.

With the com­mis­sion and IMO on board, a global GHG pri­cing mech­an­ism can be put in place to deliver IMO’s goal of net zero ship­ping by 2050. The clock is tick­ing.

Guy Plat­ten
Sec­ret­ary-Gen­eral, Inter­na­tional Cham­ber of Ship­ping
Lon­don EC3, UK