Almost 12 months after US cabinet secretaries published the list of punishments awaiting any state that voted for the IMO's Net-Zero Framework, the American delegation is back in London for four days of closed-door talks on what the framework should now become.
More than a thousand delegates are registered for the working group, which runs to Thursday and prepares the ground for MEPC 85 and the resumption of the extraordinary IMO session adjourned last October after a row that was somewhat traumatising for many participants. No journalists are allowed in the room this year, and there will be no official briefing before it's over.
Last week's Maritime Watch set out what is on the table: an EU paper that describes the Net-Zero Fund without naming it, a Chinese text that puts the word in brackets, Liberian-Panamanian regulations with no fund at all, and Gulf principles that rule out any administered carbon price. The US is expected to be more diplomatic than a year ago though there is little evidence Washington has moved on substance.
The briefing the European Parliament's environment committee commissioned before MEPC 84 made a point that is easy to lose in the noise about the Trump administration: the US has never endorsed a bunker levy, a carbon levy or emissions trading for shipping under any president. Its only market-based proposal, in 2010, traded efficiency credits and carried no price and no fund. If the fund is the object that cannot be named, the question in London is whether a framework stripped of it still passes the EU's own seven tests, and whether a US delegation has any reason to give ground.
Britain sets its own course on emissions at berth
The UK Department for Transport says it would rather price ships' emissions at berth through fuel rules and the UK ETS than copy FuelEU Maritime's shore-power mandate on ports, "the simplest and most effective way forward" in its words. The ports' objection was not the principle but the grid: one had been offered phased connections before 2030, then told it would be 2039; others cited lead times of up to 15 years, and median port capacity of 5.5 MW against an expected need of around 91 MW. Two respondents said cruise and ferry operators were already choosing European ports on electricity price. The department's document confirms at-berth emissions sit inside the UK ETS without addressing the "double pay and double reporting" concern the UK Chamber of Shipping raised a year ago.
Athens rejects Turkish marine parks drawn 'beyond territorial waters'
Two Turkish presidential decrees have designated national marine parks of 21,706 km² off Fethiye-Kaş and 1,742 km² in the North Aegean, each a single sentence with a map attached and no statement of what the status permits or forbids. The Greek foreign ministry says both reach onto the high seas and the Greek continental shelf and create no legal effect; a Cypriot and a Greek MEP have asked the Commission where it stands.
More than five thousand articles in the Maritime Watch archive, and much more this week, including the green lobby's count of the ships Europe could have scrapped rather than beached, and the Commission siding with Athens on Greece's ship-supply VAT exemption. Full coverage at maritimewatch.eu. Free trials on request to editor@maritimewatch.eu.