Impact of MEPC83 and Co2 Prices on Defossilisation Pathways for the Maritime Sector

Kurzfassung

The recently proposed requirements on the greenhouse gas intensity of fuels used in shipping by the 83rd session of the IMO´s Maritime Environment Protection Committee (MEPC83), aim to support the sector in achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Additionally, the European Union has passed laws regulating the greenhouse gas intensity of fuels and also incorporated the shipping sector into its emission trading system (ETS), as part of the "fit for 55" package, which aims to reduce the EU´s emissions by 55 % in 2030. Both the IMO and the EU´s targets are ambitious and need sufficient incentives for ship owners to accelerate the transition to a green fleet. To evaluate the current regulatory incentives and determine whether they are sufficient to achieve the ambitious targets set out by the IMO and the EU, this paper aims to quantify the impact of the regulatory measures on selected fleets and find emission prices, which would allow renewable fuels to compete with fossil fuels. For this, a cost-oriented modeling approach is proposed and incorporated into the tool "ReFleet", which allows different defossilization pathways to be compared with each other. A sensitivity analysis is carried out, subjecting ReFleet to different emission-based penalties to evaluate the competitiveness of green alternative propulsion systems to the status quo. The findings suggest market forces alone are insufficient and strategic penalties (e.g., carbon pricing) and incentives emerge as critical tools to accelerate alternative fuel deployment and meet the regulatory benchmarks set out by the EU/IMO