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With concrete action awaiting to lay out the path to
decarbonize maritime emissions, Patrick Verhoeven, managing
director of the IAPH, and Jutta Paulus, member of the European
Parliament and rapporteur for the revision of the EU emissions
reporting regulation, discussed setting out rules and mutual
expectations.
"Well, what we have been doing worldwide so far is like the game
Mikado, whoever moves first, loses," said Jutta Paulus, member of
the European Parliament comparing efforts to agree on global
regulations to reduce emissions in maritime to a game of pick-up
sticks, popular in Paulus' native Germany. The game requires one to
remove sticks from a pile without causing disturbance to the
others.
"And that is obviously not the correct way to address the
crisis," she warned. Paulus is deeply ingrained in this topic as
she, within the parliament is a member of the committees on
Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety; Industry, Research and
Energy; and Transport. She is also the EU rapporteur for the
revision of the monitoring, reporting, and verification regulation
(MRV) , the EU's maritime emissions and fuel usage report
system.
"If anyone said to me, why don't we bring in a global carbon
tax, which is negotiated on the IMO level and applied worldwide to
every single journey, I would say, let's do it tomorrow," she
said.
Countering the argument that the planned inclusion of maritime
in the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS) will cause a patchwork of
regulations to adhere to, she said, "I don't think that the EU will
say, we won't participate in any global measure because we like our
ETS so much. I think if there was a measure that was actually
working and where there are no loopholes, you would of course say
well, great shipping is covered in this global measure so we can
take it out of the ETS again."
This might be relieving to hear for the maritime industry, but
Paulus also made clear that there is not much desire from the other
included sectors to have maritime be a part of the deal. "When the
talk started about including maritime in the ETS, it was not yet
clear whether shipping would be a siloed ETS or whether it would be
included in the general ETS where power production industries are
in. Those now say the avoidance cost in shipping is much higher
than in power production, which will hurt us but not shipping," she
explained, adding that "if there was a global measure, the
commission would also receive pressure from the industry to take
out shipping again."
Getting everyone on board
The managing director of the IAPH, Patrick Verhoeven, agreed
that it is good to have front running regions such as Europe who
move ahead. "And I must say, I am very pleased to hear that
potentially, once there is a global instrument, we would withdraw
shipping out of the ETS again. I think that's a good incentive to
make progress at a global level."
The above article is an excerpt from the cover interview of
Ports & Harbors magazine, September/October 2021. Ports &
Harbors is the membership publication of the International
Association of Ports & Harbors.
Jutta Paulus has been a German member of the
European Parliament for the Greens/European Free Alliance since
July 2019. Before, she worked in quality management and controlling
in laboratories and hospitals. Paulus holds a bachelor of pharmacy
from the Philipps-Unversität of Marburg, Germany.
Patrick Verhoeven is the managing director of
the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH),
responsible for policy and strategy. The organisation represents
about 170 ports and some 140 port-related businesses in 90
countries worldwide. Prior to joining IAPH in 2017, Patrick spent
twenty-four years in Brussels representing the interests of
shipowners, port authorities, terminal operators and ship agents at
EU level. He started his career in 1991 with the Antwerp-based ship
agent Grisar & Velge. Patrick holds a PhD in applied economics
and a bachelor's in law from the University of Antwerp.
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