According to press reports the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is on a policy collision course with the European Union over vessel CO2 emissions.
The IMO has been unable to make “tangible progress” after a week of talks that ended late on Friday. This has led the European Union executive of the 27-nation European Union bloc to threatened to enforce its own shipping regulations if the IMO fails to act, as it has with aviation.
According to press reports the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is on a policy collision course with the European Union over vessel CO2 emissions.
The IMO has been unable to make “tangible progress” after a week of talks that ended late on Friday. This has led the European Union executive of the 27-nation European Union bloc to threatened to enforce its own shipping regulations if the IMO fails to act, as it has with aviation.
IMO Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu has called for an impact assessment study on nine different market-based proposals and to finalise it by 2013.
“Let us work together and set ourselves the challenge of completing all of the work on the establishment of a market-based measure by a target year of 2015,” he said in his opening speech on Monday.
But the talks were bogged down by a debate about technical cooperation and technology transfer in relation to an agreement on an energy efficiency design index reached last year, delegates said.
Last July, forty eight countries voted in favour of adopting a mandatory energy efficiency design index (EEDI) for new ships and a voluntary energy efficiency management plant for all ships.
“There is bad feeling as a result of that,” said John Maggs, policy advisor at Seas At Risk, a European association of non-governmental environmental organizations.
“Those who didn’t support adoption of the EEDI last year are now causing difficulties for further progress on greenhouse gas measures.”
The talks were also held back by a debate about the appointment of a steering group to oversee the commissioning of the impact study, he said, adding “which as a result of developing country lobbying is now a necessary precursor to making any further progress.”
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