Pressing the pause button on net zero

In a surprise development, anticipated adoption of IMO’s Net-Zero Framework at an extraordinary session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) in mid-October never happened. This is largely because of political pressure with the US openly threatening tariff reprisals against countries voting in favour.

Tone of the MEPC debate quickly deteriorated, with accusations of ‘bias’ against the meeting chairman and charges of ‘neo colonialism’ levelled at the EU and North European bloc supporting the NZF. IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominquez had to step in to try and calm matters, chiding that this wasn’t the way the UN body traditionally comported itself. 

Amid all the acrimony, previous supporters of the NZF began to waver, leading to an IMO decision to defer consideration for a year while Member States worked on tweaking the Framework to try and reach consensus.

The writing had already been on the wall, with shipowners becoming increasingly vocal about the NZF’s shortcomings and inconsistencies in the run-up to the MEPC. Whether the Framework was really ‘fit for purpose’ became one of the major talking points at London International Shipping Week in September, many feeling it more a way of extracting funds from the shipping industry rather than actually reducing emissions.

And ABS Chairman and CEO Chris Wiernicki dropped a veritable bombshell during the London thought-leadership week by calling on the IMO to “take a timeout” to pause and rethink its strategy on reducing shipping’s GHG emissions – which it turns out is exactly what happened. 

Global regulation via consensus at the IMO “is important”, Wiernicki had said, “but it is equally important we get this right” - a sentiment on which IMO Member States and the shipping industry as a whole can surely now agree and move forward.