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“Achieving climate targets may be out of reach” – Cem Saral | |
| Sumita Pawar |
According to Cem Saral, CEO of Cockett Marine Oil, "achieving 2015 Paris climate targets may be out of reach despite policy and technological advances." "Increased intensity on global emissions legislation is the key to driving infrastructure and innovation.
He used information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report to show that even in the best-case scenario, the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is unlikely to be met, but a goal of under 2.0°C might be.
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More worryingly, by 2100, moderate- to high-risk scenarios portend a rise of between over 2.3°C and almost 5.0°C, which would have disastrous consequences for the planet, triggering cataclysmic events such as the disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Despite a drop due to the pandemic in 2020, global CO2 emissions are expected to reach their highest-ever level this year, at 37.5 billion metric tonnes (mt), after peaking at 36.7 billion mt in 2019.
To take the shipping industry in isolation, demonstrable progress in reducing CO2 emissions has been made since 2009, when the level peaked at around 3.2% as a percentage of the world total. The industry's current share, at 2.3%, has not increased significantly since 2014.
But Saral was quick to point out that, even though progress has been made in retrofitting the existing fleet with scrubbers and making sure that new builds are ready to use both types of fuel, the report shows that the amount of the fleet that uses new fuel types is still too small.
According to the report, when combining the current fleet with the existing orderbook, alternative fuels-capable vessels add up to only 2,008 ships out of a total of 61,749 when analysing vessels of a size greater than 2,000 gross metric tons.
On a gross tonnage basis, this means that although 47.3% of the orderbook is new-fuel compliant, when combined with the existing fleet, only 9.6% of the total when delivered will be fit for purpose.
Excluding LNG-fueled vessels, a paltry 1.09% of the future total fleet plus pending deliveries will be powered using fuels such as methanol, ethanol, or hydrogen, as measured by gross tonnage.
Citing a 2022 report on the role of the global ship finance portfolio in meeting IMO targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2050, he said only seven out of 28 financial institutions were aligned with the global watchdog’s targets.
"On every aspect of decarbonization, it’s clear that what has been achieved so far falls short of our ambitions, not just in shipping but in every aspect of industry." "With regards to policy, the Net-Zero 2050 goals set out in adherence to the Paris Climate Agreement are visibly behind our ambitions," said Saral, speaking to Seatrade Maritime News on the sidelines of the event.
"It seems very unlikely that we will be able to limit temperature rises to 1.5°C by the end of the century."
The report mentioned, with regard to the shipping and marine fuels industry, existing legislation, whether the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as set within geographic bounds, the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI), and the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII), were steps in the right direction.
But on their own, they were "not sufficiently intense to drive a far more effective and strong level of innovation for setting up new supply chains or creating novel fuel solutions to drive decarbonization into higher gear," he said.
Cockett Marine Oil is a Dubai-based unit of the Cockett Group, which is owned by Vitol and Grindrod, each with 50% stakes. It has offices in 11 countries around the world.