Green shipping corridors grow but sector emissions rise

A report from the Global Maritime Forum has given cause for hope, with the number of green shipping corridors increasing by 40 per cent and a total of 62 initiatives now in place around the globe. However, this good news is tempered by a recent report from UMAS and UCL that emissions from shipping have returned to their 2008 peak. According to UCL’s Dr Tristan Smith, insufficient energy efficiency improvements are largely to blame for the trend, with the sector adopting faster average speeds and consequently higher emissions in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

“The message from this analysis is that the fleet actually has a latent efficiency opportunity – because during the period to 2022, utilisation and speeds of many ship categories actually trended in directions countering efficiency improvements,” said Dr Smith, Professor of Energy and Transport at the UCL Energy Institute.