Report on the IMO’s legal remit on upstream fuel emissions

Background

The shipping industry is almost entirely reliant on fossil fuels. Most of the climate damage occurs downstream when fuel is burnt on ships and emissions enter the air. While alternative fuels need to be developed to tackle this, many of the fuels under discussion could instead cause significant climate damage due to their “upstream emissions” at the feedstock, transport and production stages. For this reason, it is important that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) regulates the full lifecycle of shipping fuel emissions.

The IMO’s legal remit

• The Convention on the International Maritime Organization (the IMO Convention) established the IMO and gave it very broad objectives, and comprehensive powers to achieve those objectives.
• The objectives include the “prevention and control of marine pollution from ships” (Article 1(a)).
• The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) reinforces the broad powers of the IMO and tasks the IMO specifically with preventing, reducing and controlling pollution of the marine environment.

The IMO has all the powers necessary to regulate the emissions from the full lifecycle of any shipping fuel. This includes the ability to place that regulation within the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL Convention). MARPOL regulates countries and not ships, so while any provisions can restrict what a ship can or should do, the convention is binding on countries. This leaves scope to design measures that include upstream emissions.

What’s covered in the report?

This paper identifies three key arguments to support the IMO’s ability to regulate upstream emissions:

1. Such regulation is consistent with IMO objectives and purposes.
2. It is consistent with existing IMO practice on environmental regulation and fuels.
3. It is within the IMO’s competency and there are no legal limits preventing regulation.

Given all of this, we conclude that the IMO has broad powers to enact almost any required measure in the transition to a zero emissions sector.

Read the full report below.