Reality bites as green agenda takes hold

As green as we’d like to think of our sport, competing beyond the local level is hardly clean. And lately, its been pretty costly, particularly when putting a boat on a ship for transport.

Futuristic stories of transport ships with wing sails have transitioned to realistic objectives, perhaps to help both needs, but changes to this industry are coming. Lloyd’s List editor-in-chief Richard Meade shares the clairvoyant content from his crystal ball:

That faint whirring you can hear in the background right now is not the air con on the blink — it’s the sound of mental cogs grinding as the industry collectively runs through the mental calculations and reviews long-held assumptions about what happens next.

There is a recalibration happening in the minds of governments and, some, executives as they start to clock that decarbonization is not just a press release and real problems are about to start really hurting much sooner than they expected.

Widespread complacency based on the 2018 initial greenhouse gas strategy of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is evaporating and, in some quarters, mild panic is setting in. Once the rest of them catch up, that panic is going to be more audible.

Conceptually, most understand that the IMO’s revised climate strategy creates a very clear onus for a rapid and strong upwards revision of corporate, national and regional actions.

But too few have cottoned on to the urgency of action that implies.

For all the public optimism and methanol-fueled statements of progress, shipping executives genuinely convinced of their ability to hit even a basic 2030 climate target based on tangible plans, rather than smoke and mirrors, are a rare breed.

In government meanwhile, the celebrations of a job well done at MEPC80 are a distant memory and the realization that the really difficult bit is now upon us that has started to hit home.

The number of ships calling in small Pacific Island states every year is measured in double digits. Europe’s traffic is managed in petabytes of data. That is significant in terms of the next phase of discussion around carbon pricing because it is going to color how the funds raised are distributed and compared with setting levels of ambition for shipping, the discussion over climate mitigation funding is a real problem with no immediate sign of a solution.

So as the negotiators try to second guess how far developing and developed states will be willing to compromise, the implied scenarios for industry start to become clearer, and the sound of whirring cogs becomes louder. Next, you should listen out for the whimper of executive panic.