THE World Shipping Council (WSC) wants the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to revisit its greenhouse gas emission regulations, reports Bloomberg News.
The WSC, whose members include AP Moller-Maersk, Cosco Shipping Holdings Co, and Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), is asking for "global, enforceable multilateral regulation to avoid the race to the bottom," according to United Nations (UN) Conference on Trade and Development head of trade logistics Jan Hoffmann.
"They don't really mind that level of regulation as long as it's the same for everybody."
The Global Maritime Forum estimates that fully decarbonising the shipping sector by 2050 will require US$95 billion of investment per year starting in the next decade.
That compares with the $25 billion climate change could cost the industry every year by the end of the century.
The container port industry's global net earnings in 2019 totaled that amount.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Centre for Transportation and Logistics lecturer Josue Martinez declared companies investing in alternative energies are going to get ahead with efficiencies that will bring huge reductions in costs.
The IMO's marine environmental protection committee will meet in June to discuss the advancement of its greenhouse-gas emission strategy.
The current framework establishes a 50 per cent cut in emissions by 2050, which is short of what's required with the Paris Agreement's ambitions on limiting temperature increases.
Getting the International Maritime Organisation's 175 member states to reach a consensus is a difficult endeavor.
For example, at the last session of the organization in November, they failed to pass a CO2-based charge on vessels' fuel consumption.
In the EU, there are plans to include ocean shipping in the bloc's Emissions Trading System, which aims to boost the uptake of sustainable fuels.
Maersk consumes 12 million tons of oil in a year, the same amount produced in the world daily.
Regardless, it's vowing to go carbon-neutral by 2040.
The Copenhagen-based carrier intends to run its first methanol-fueled ship by the summer of 2023, according to the head of decarbonisation Jacob Sterling.
"We found ourselves in this chicken-and-egg dilemma where we tried to convince people to produce green methanol."
"It was like we were going around in circles," said Mr Sterling.
Said environmental defence fund author Marie Hubatova: "As trade grows and we don't move away from fossil fuels, then the emissions from the shipping sector will grow as well."
"One way to look at it is: 'If I don't decarbonise, then I'm basically self-destructive. The emissions I produce are eventually going to cost me a lot of money in damage brought by climate change.'"
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