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Hapag-Lloyd and Louis Dreyfus Armateurs are among a host of shipping lines and organisations initiating a big pushback campaign today against the growing use of biofuels in shipping, warning that an area the size of Germany would need to be recultivated to meet potential projected growth of this alternative marine fuel.
The eighteenth Intersessional Working Group on Greenhouse Gases (ISWG-GHG 18) starts its meeting at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) today, discussing regulatory measures to enable the shipping industry to become net zero by 2050.
Determined to push back against the rise in biofuel use, many NGOs and shipping lines have come out in force today arguing that the majority of biofuels produced now from food crop-based feedstocks come with direct and indirect deforestation, and many other sustainability issues ranging from water scarcity to food security.
Fuelling cargo ships with deforestation is a terrible idea
“Unless legally-binding safeguards are introduced, there is a risk that a large amount of fossil fuels will be replaced with unsustainable biofuels,” signatories to one campaign that also include Hoegh Autoliners argue in an open letter sent to the IMO.
Nearly a third of global shipping could run on biofuels in 2030, new analysis from NGO Transport & Environment (T&E) shows, up from less than 1% today.
The study by Cerulogy on behalf of T&E shows that palm and soy oil would likely make up nearly two-thirds of the biodiesel used to power the shipping industry in 2030 as they represent the cheapest fuels to comply. This poses a serious climate problem, warns T&E, as palm and soy are responsible for two to three times more carbon emissions than even the dirtiest shipping fuels today, once deforestation and land clearance are taken into account.
The fuel-intensive shipping industry would need vast amounts of farmland. 34m hectares in 2030 – the total area of Germany – will be needed to produce enough crops to meet the increased biofuels demand from the shipping industry.
When the EU decided to encourage the use of biofuels in 2009, the consumption of palm oil-based biofuels doubled between 2010 and 2020, reaching close to a third of EU biofuels use. Scientific evidence later demonstrated that 45% of palm oil expansion happened at the expense of carbon rich ecosystems like forests or peatlands over that same period. Similar findings have been uncovered for other crop-based feedstock such as soy.
Evidence on the negative impacts has prompted countries such as France, Norway, the Netherlands, and others to restrict or stop palm and soy-based biofuels in domestic use. Europe has also decided to exclude the use of feed- and food-based biofuels from its flagship shipping fuels regulation (FuelEU).
Signatories have called on the IMO and member states to discourage the use of crop-based biofuels by ships and to consider the excluding crop-based biofuels from the eligibility list for compliance with existing and future MARPOL Annex VI regulations.
Signatories argued that with biofuels, the industry risks deploying a cure worse than the disease to address shipping’s climate impact.
Constance Dijkstra, shipping manager at T&E, said: “Fuelling cargo ships with deforestation is a terrible idea. Burning crops for fuel is bad for the planet and bad for global food security. The IMO should consider the climate impact of bad biofuels to avoid doing more harm than good.”
A separate letter sent to the IMO today – led by Biofuelwatch and the Global Forest Coalition – has addressed similar concerns.
In April the IMO will finalise new climate rules for shipping to try to phase out fossil fuels with a global fuel standard (GFS) likely to be implemented which could either speed up shipping’s transition to renewable energy, or see the industry become a large demand sector for biofuels.
An influential proposal from Brazil risks replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, which raises serious concerns among conservation groups about the potential environmental and food security impacts of this plan.
According to a recent submission to the IMO by T&E, biofuels could make up almost half (44%) of shipping’s energy demand by 2035, most of which will derive from food- and feed-based crops (soy and palm oil), unless the fuel standard is carefully designed to exclude these categories.
Biofuelwatch mobilised a similar warning on aviation a few years ago. Now, sensing a new potential danger, the NGO is worried that shipping could make the same, or even bigger mistake.
While many shipping companies have embraced recycled vegetable oil as an alternative fuel, campaigners have hit out at this too arguing that wastes and residues, including animal fats, are in limited supply and existing demand far exceeds their availability. Furthermore, many of those residues and wastes have high indirect greenhouse gas emissions, due to competition between biofuels and other uses.
Analysis from T&E shows a 20,000 teu boxship travelling between China and Brazil would alone require the yearly waste oil from more than 2,000 McDonald’s restaurants, while to run it on animal fats would require over 1m pigs.
The post Pushback campaign against biofuels launches at the IMO appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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