The small price to pay to clean up shipping

This briefing assesses the likely cost increase in seaborne transport in a hypothetical fully decarbonised scenario and, more specifically, if the ambition of the proposed FuelEU Maritime (FEUM) and the Maritime ETS is substantially strengthened. The briefing assesses the likely cost impact of increasing the overall 2030 fuel greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity target under FEUM from -6% to -14%, mandating an additional 6% sub-quota for renewable fuels of non-biological origin (RFNBOs, or e-fuels) and incorporating a well-to-wake (WtW) CO₂ equivalent emissions into the maritime ETS, which currently only covers tank-to-wake (TtW) CO₂ emissions.

Based on a real-world example of a voyage of an average large container vessel sailing between China and Belgium, the analysis concluded that the likely impact on seaborne transport costs would be negligible.

Correction

This analysis was updated on July 18, 2022 in order to fix an error in relation to ETS costs in the calculations. The original analysis included ETS cost estimations, but, given that carbon costs were inadvertently added both to baseline and alternative fuel-mix scenarios, this had cancelled out the impact of ETS costs in the final results. The impact of this revision on the overall conclusions of the analysis remains minor. Sorry.