IMO takes its foot off the gas

摘要

The march meeting of the IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 60) was unable to find a fast route to implement any of its proposed measures on ship emissions. High on the agenda was the mandatory imposition of the controversial Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) for new ships and a decision on implementing so-called market-based instruments that would require operators to pay some form of levy on CO_2 from ship exhausts. In the event, neither of these progressed very far, due largely to delegates from developing countries throwing a spanner in the works by linking them to obligations existing under the Kyoto protocol.