Ice-class vessels and the reform of the Emissions Trading System

Subject: Ice-class vessels and the reform of the Emissions Trading System

According to the sustainable and smart mobility strategy, the Commission’s objective is to make maritime transport safe, secure and efficient while reducing costs. Simultaneously, within the context of the European Green Deal, the Commission is planning to extend the EU ETS (Emissions Trading System) to include maritime emissions.

For ice-class vessels, the decarbonisation challenge is greater than for vessels designed to navigate in open water only. Operating in Arctic conditions increases a vessel’s fuel consumption. The fuel consumption of ice-class vessels during the open water season is also higher than the consumption of ships designed for open water conditions only. Thus, including maritime emissions in the ETS will be more costly in the Member States that experience Arctic conditions.

How is the Commission planning to compensate, in the ETS reform, for the additional costs incurred by ice-class vessels operating in Arctic conditions, as well as the costs incurred by ice-class vessels during the open water season?

What is its view on introducing an ice-class correction factor, similar to those developed by the International Maritime Organization, in order to calculate ice-class vessel emissions?

How is it planning to reach the cost‑reduction and decarbonisation objectives of the sector, also with regard to ice-class vessels?

Answer given by Executive Vice-President Timmermans on behalf of the European Commission (9 August 2021)

In line with the European Green Deal (1), the Climate Target Plan communication (2) and the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy (3), the Commission is advocating a basket of measures to accompany the shipping sector in its decarbonisation efforts.

Putting a price on carbon is important to make polluters pay for the costs generated and support investments in low-carbon solutions. That is why the Commission proposed on 14 July 2021 to extend the EU’s emissions trading system to cover the maritime transport sector as part of the Fit for 55 package.

The objective of the Commission’s proposal is to create a system that ensures equal treatment and level-playing field for all actors, which means that any exemption or special treatment must be motivated by a clear underlying competitive distortion. The Commission considers that all carbon emissions should have a price and is confident that higher Emissions Trading System (ETS) revenues will lead to higher support for climate and energy-related actions.

As the discussions on the operational carbon intensity standard at the 76th meeting of the International Maritime Organisation’s Marine Environment Protection Committee have also shown, any corrections or exclusions must be dealt with extreme care, as their proliferation may compromise the effectiveness of the entire regulatory framework as well as the level playing field.

To accelerate the decarbonisation of shipping, the Fit for 55 package supports the uptake of sustainable alternative fuel through the FuelEU Maritime initiative. Its objective is to introduce uniform requirements across the EU to stimulate the demand for renewable and low-carbon fuels while maintaining a level playing field.

⋅1∙ COM(2019) 640 final.

⋅2∙ COM(2020) 562 final.

⋅3∙ COM(2020 789 final.