Reporting and Verification of CO2 Emissions

New steps of international monitoring, reporting and verification of CO2 emissions for the shipping industry

International awareness about control and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the shipping industry continues. Several further important steps have been made, not only on the regional level of European Union (EU) countries, but also worldwide within UN International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

Both IMO and EU are currently actively developing the legislative frameworks in order to ensure implementation of actions aimed to reduce of CO2 emissions by the maritime transport.

In its 70th Session (Oct 2016) the UN IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) adopted the mandatory MARPOL Annex VI requirements for ships to record and report their fuel oil consumption, and also approved a Roadmap (2017 through to 2023) for developing a comprehensive IMO strategy on reduction of GHG emissions from ships, which foresees an initial GHG reduction strategy to be adopted in 2018. It contains a list of activities, including further IMO GHG studies, with relevant timelines. It also aligns new activities for energy efficiency improvements of ships in a three-step approach with the already ongoing work of the MEPC. This alignment provides a way forward to the adoption of a revised strategy in 2023 to include further short-, mid-, and long-term measures, as required, with implementation schedules.

Under the amendments, ships of 5,000 gross tonnage and above will be required to collect consumption data for each type of fuel oil they use, as well as other, additional, specified data including proxies for transport work. The aggregated data will be reported to the flag State (until now no accredited third party verifier is required) after the end of each calendar year and the flag State, having determined that the data has been reported in accordance with the requirements, will issue a Statement of Compliance to the ship. Flag States will be required to subsequently transfer this data to an IMO Ship Fuel Oil Consumption Database. IMO will be required to produce an annual report to the MEPC, summarizing the data collected.

It is planned that the first intersessional meeting (subject to approval by the IMO Council) would be held back-to-back with MEPC 71, which is scheduled to meet in mid-2017.

Source: http://www.imo.org

For further information please contact Mr. David Kroll, tel.: +49 30 2332021-63.