This week, global shipping is focused on London’s South Bank, where the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) is holding its 70th meeting – amid mounting pressure on delegates to tackle global shipping emissions.

MEPC70 will debate procedures for mandatory collection of fuel-consumption data under Marpol Annex VI. They will discuss the IMO fuel-availability study to determine whether the global sulphur cap takes effect in 2020 or in 2025. They will also discuss type approvals for ballast water treatment systems.

Many want MEPC70 to go much further.

More than 50 shipowners and other industry players have written to the heads of the IMO member states to demand clear – and much tougher – environmental targets.

And former DNV GL chief executive Henrik Madsen goes further still, calling for a global tax on bunker fuel. Taxation will push shipowners to use lower-carbon fuels, he said, and could subsidise a switch to cleaner-burning fuels in the way that Norway’s NOx fund supported uptake of LNG.

Meanwhile, indigenous groups urge the IMO to ban heavy fuel oils in Arctic and Antarctic waters.

LNG shipping interests say shipowners need tougher environmental regulation and financial incentives to switch to LNG as marine fuel.

Members of industry lobby SEA\LNG say LNG is ready to meet global shipping’s future emissions requirements. They have stopped short of calling for the global 0.5 per cent sulphur cap to take effect from 2020, however.

This week’s meeting will almost certainly disappoint those who want the IMO to set tougher, clearer environmental goals. The United Nations shipping body has already rejected a global emissions cap and failed to set greenhouse gas emissions-reduction targets for the industry.

Global shipping accounts for more than 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – and the IMO itself expects these to increase by 250 per cent over 2014 levels come 2050. And yet there is no international climate regulation over an industry with higher emissions than Germany.

Meanwhile, the men and women sitting around the table at IMO headquarters remain bitterly divided. On the one hand, delegates representing European, African and island nations want clarity on what constitutes “a fair share” of global carbon cuts. On the other, representatives from India, China and Brazil want the IMO to focus on energy efficiency and gathering emissions data.

Those who hoped for a direct boost in uptake for LNG as marine fuel from this week’s meeting may find it falls far short.

source: http://www.lngworldshipping.com/news/view,will-mepc70-boost-lng-as-marine-fuel_45152.htm