National action plans for maritime transport
National action plans (NAPs) are voluntary-based national strategies that support and complement international efforts for decarbonising shipping activity both from a regulatory as well as from a technology development and uptake perspective. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) adopted in November 2020 a resolution (MEPC. 327(75)) encouraging member states to develop and submit NAPs to address GHG emissions from ships. The actual decarbonisation impact of NAPs will depend on the measures that are reflected within it, as well as on how well they are implemented on the ground. By August 2021, India, Japan, the Marshall Islands, Norway and the United Kingdom had submitted their NAPs to IMO.
The CO2 mitigation impact of National Action Plans is difficult to measure and no known studies have analysed their direct impacts, but they are an essential step to facilitate the implementation of other measures. Mitigation potential will likely depend on the series of policy measures included in NAPs themselves. NAPs can particularly:
- Boost the renewal of ship technologies in domestic and short distance fleets.
- Incentivise research and development on new low and zero-carbon fuels.
- Improve institutional and legislative frameworks for better implementation of measures including, but not being limited to, promoting necessary domestic regulations for energy efficiency of ships.
In all cases, the CO2 mitigation potential of developing NAPs will vary according to the ambition of measures and government commitments, as well as how well they are followed. The NAP can also provide more confidence to the financial sector, which can support further investment in R&D, infrastructure and fleet renewal.
Measures that aim at promoting fleet technology change and at improving energy efficiency in national fleets can enhance efforts for decarbonising international shipping activity. According to the Fourth IMO Greenhouse Gas Study 2020, domestic ship emissions can constitute between 13% and 30% of total global ship emissions depending on the method of calculation, underlining the responsibility of national governments and their legislation in reducing those emissions. In addition, for the smallest size categories of ship types dominant in the inventory of international shipping, the percentage of emissions from national shipping activities can be significantly higher depending on the method of calculation. Due to this, measures that reduce domestic shipping emissions, such as subsidies for electrification, providing onshore electric charging systems or other renewable energy generation, can also contribute towards mitigating international shipping emissions. This also applies for measures aimed at developing new technologies, which could be implemented in national contexts and rolled out internationally.
Indirectly, NAPs' elaboration process could also serve as a platform for exchange and for increasing capacities of relevant authorities, thereby facilitating the co-ordination of and implementation of future actions for mitigating GHG emissions from the sector. Countries with limited policy experience in maritime decarbonisation practices can benefit from technical support and transfer from states with more policy experience in the field. The IMO and Norway, through the GreenVoyage2050 Project, are currently supporting developing countries, including Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States, in the development of their own NAPs, as one of the components of a project aiming at contributing towards the implementation of the Initial GHG IMO strategy. In creating NAPs, the project helps to develop the human and technical capacity required for future decarbonisation actions, thereby furthering the CO2 mitigation potential of partnering countries. Countries with more experience in making national green shipping strategies can also gain from the process of elaborating NAPs. Previous ITF studies have highlighted that having a common strategy for green shipping in Sweden could help to harmonise and create synergies between public and private ambitions and actions for mitigating shipping CO2 emissions. NAPs could serve as a dialogue platform between relevant actors to this end.
Costs linked to the creation of NAPs include negotiation efforts for the creation of these documents. Effective NAPs require negotiations between relevant actors in government at national, regional and local level, the private sector, academia and civil society. The creation of NAPs in Norway and the UK has explicitly been linked to partnerships and dialogues with the private sector. The creation of NAPs can also involve the organisation of large meetings for deliberating between relevant actors (including those from academia, civil society and the private sector) about which policy actions to include.
In countries with no previous experience in developing national green shipping strategies and action plans, additional costs could be linked to capacity building needs. The IMO Global Maritime Energy Efficiency Partnerships (GloMEEP) Project on transforming the global maritime transport industry towards a low carbon future, carried out between 2016 and 2019, sought to support authorities in Argentina, China, Georgia, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Morocco, Panama, Philippines and South Africa in creating national strategies for improving the energy efficiency of ships. This project included quantitative and qualitative training workshops for relevant authorities. In 2019, the Norwegian government set up a fund of around EUR 1 million to supporting authorities in developing countries to develop the capacities required for setting up national strategies and plans for greening shipping activities. The cost of implementing measures reflected in NAPs will depend on the identified actions themselves.
NAPs can highlight additional externalities of actions aimed at decarbonising national shipping activities, beyond CO2 mitigation. The UK NAP shows, for instance, how actions framed in their plan could represent market opportunities worth more than GBP 10 000 million. . In the same vein, NAPs can also highlight existing private actions that could expedite the greening of national shipping and which could benefit from public support. The Norwegian NAP also highlights the importance – and seeks to give support to - the Green Shipping programme; a public-private partnership set to establish the world's most efficient and environmentally friendly coastal shipping fleet. Beyond support for private endeavours, the Norwegian, UK and the Japanese NAPs further highlight potential air quality benefits of measures.
The potential of NAPs could decrease if the level of ambition of expected measures were low, or if measures within it did not necessarily lead to policy implementation. Only the UK and the Norwegian NAPs explicitly state the 'next step' commitments by governments to achieve their intended objectives. Such gaps could decrease the potential of NAPs for decarbonising the shipping sector.
The potential of NAPs could also decrease if the lack of communication between countries for common base guidelines for NAPs led to divergent standards, resulting in lower ambition for some of the plans. For example, only Norway's NAP gives an objective of CO2 mitigation for shipping as part of the strategy by halving emissions from such activities by 2030, without clarifying a base year. For the rest of the countries that have thus far provided NAPs, actions within the documents do not yet include actual decarbonisation gains from measures. Thus the potential of a NAP for decarbonisation could be partially lost. On another note, if countries promote standards for ship technologies that vary in ambition from one national regulation to another within NAPs, the impact of promoting cleaner national fleets for decarbonising international shipping activities could be decreased.
ITF (2021), Transport Climate Action Directory – National action plans for maritime transport
https://www.itf-oecd.org/policy/national-action-plans-maritime-transport
ITF (2020) Navigating Cleaner Maritime Shipping: lessons from the Nordic region, https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/navigating-cleaner-maritime-shipping.pdf
ITF (2018) Decarbonising Maritime Transport: The Case of Sweden , https://doi.org/10.1787/99514381-en
IMO (2020) Fourth Greenhouse Gas Study 2020, https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Environment/Pages/Fourth-IMO-Greenhouse-Gas-Study-2020.aspx
Godínez-Zamora et al. (2020) Decarbonising the transport and energy sectors: Technical feasibility and socioeconomic impacts in Costa Rica, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2020.100573
Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (2020) Roadmap to Zero Emission from International Shipping, https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Environment/Documents/Air%20pollution/Roadmap%20to%20Zero%20Emission%20from%20International%20Shipping%20-%20Japan%20March%202020.pdf
Joung et al. (2019) The IMO initial strategy for reducing Greenhouse Gas(GHG) emissions, and its follow-up actions towards 2050, https://doi.org/10.1080/25725084.2019.1707938
Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways of India (2021) Maritime India vision 2030 , https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Environment/Documents/Air%20pollution/Maritime%20India%20vision%202030.pdf
Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment (2019) The Government's action plan for green shipping , https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/2ccd2f4e14d44bc88c93ac4effe78b2f/the-governments-action-plan-for-green-shipping.pdf
United Kingdom's Department for Transport (2019) Clean Maritime Plan, https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Environment/Documents/Clean%20Maritime%20Plan%202019.pdf
UNDP (2018) Terminal evaluation: transforming the global maritime transport industry towards a low carbon future through improved energy efficiency (GLOMEEP): An independent Terminal Evaluation, https://erc.undp.org/evaluation/evaluations/detail/9744#
Xing H., Spence S. and Chen H. (2020) A comprehensive review on countermeasures for CO2 emissions from ships, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110222
Printer-friendly version