Emissions

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement that sets binding targets for 37 industrialised countries and the European Community for reducing GHG emissions. It was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005 and 184 parties have ratified it to date. Shipping and aviation were not covered by the Kyoto Protocol created by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which fixed either limitations or reductions of GHG emissions from all other sources and proposed a number of measures (eg through Emission Trading Schemes (ETS)) and targets to begin to control the emissions.

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At the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention in Dec 2008 (COP 14), IMO were mandated to find technical and operational solutions to reduce GHG from global shipping in line with the Kyoto Protocol principles.

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The IMO have not yet favoured any particular means of applying constraints on GHG emissions.  They have proposed two Indices to help to demonstrate that shipping is moving towards a more efficient operating regime:  the Energy Efficient Design Index (EEDI), and the Energy Efficient Operating Index (EEOI).  The EEDI will apply to future new designs of ship, and hence will take many years to have any effect.

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