At the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York today a host of top shipowners, managers, ports, banks and shippers have vowed to get commercially viable zero emission vessels operating on deepsea routes by 2030.
The Getting to Zero Coalition features the likes of Maersk, Shell, Cargill and Trafigura among its 70+ members.
The ambition of the Getting to Zero Coalition is closely aligned with the UN International Maritime Organization’s Initial GHG Strategy. The strategy prescribes that international shipping must reduce its total annual greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% of 2008 levels by 2050, whilst pursuing efforts towards phasing them out as soon as possible in this century.
The Getting to Zero Coalition is a partnership between the Global Maritime Forum, the Friends of Ocean Action, and the World Economic Forum.
“Efficiency measures can only keep shipping emissions stable, not eliminate them. To take the next big step change towards decarbonization of shipping, a shift in propulsion technologies or a shift to clean fuels is required which implies close collaboration from all parties. The coalition launched today is a crucial vehicle to make this collaboration happen,” said Søren Skou, CEO of A.P. Møller Mærsk, a company that has taken the lead in this field by vowing to be carbon neutral by 2050.
“Decarbonizing maritime shipping is a huge task with no simple answer, but it has to be done,” said Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.
“To reach the 2050 zero emissions goal requires a paradigm shift: our industry will need to align with key actors across the entire energy sector,” said Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill Ocean Transportation
Christopher Wiernicki, chairman of the American Bureau of Shipping, commented: “The greatest challenge of our generation – and the next – will be the decarbonisation of the shipping industry.”
