New tool for exploring the impacts of policy measures aimed at reducing GHG emissions from shipping released by UCL Shipping and Oceans Research Group

Using datasets from the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Comprehensive Impact Assessment (CIA) of mid-term measures, UCL Energy Institute’s Shipping and Oceans Research group has released a new tool which allows users to quickly and easily plot the results for countries of their choice. 

Map of GDP impacts by country in 2050 in a policy scenario with GFS + $150-300/t levy and revenue distribution both to subsidise e-fuels as well as distributed to any country in proportion to its negative impacts (before revenue distribution) and population size 

The IMO CIA is a detailed evaluation of the potential effects of regulatory measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping. The assessment focuses on proposed policy instruments that aim to decarbonize the maritime sector, supporting the IMO’s target to its 2023 GHG Strategy of achieving net-zero GHG emissions by or around 2050, with intermediate checkpoints in 2030 and 2040. The mid-term measures discussed typically include a combination of an economic (pricing mechanism) and a technical element (fuel standard). Task 3 of the CIA, conducted by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), assesses the impacts of the measures on States. The report describes the results including along 4 country aggregates - namely world, developed countries, developing countries, SIDs and LDCs – and provides granular detailed results at the country level in the appendices.

The UCL tool, developed by Marie Fricaudet, PhD student at the UCL Energy Institute, shows the impacts of the different policy measures on GDP, imports, exports and consumer price index in each scenario modelled by UNCTAD, in 2030, 2040 and 2050, in each country or aggregate of countries, presented as graphs or on a world map, as shown below. The tool is made publicly available so that stakeholders at the IMO or interested parties can easily extract the information they wish from the results of the CIA task 3 report by UNCTAD. The UNCTAD report can be downloaded from the IMO website. The detail in the report explains the method and input assumptions and data, and the section on limitations of the data and method are important for understanding and interpreting the results.

Map of GDP impacts by country in 2050 in a policy scenario with a GFS (with a flexibility mechanism and GHG price on marginal GHG emissions) and no levy. 

GDP impacts in 2050 for different policy scenarios for specific countries across a range of income levels, compared with the overall spread of impacts across all scenarios. (High levy = $150-300/t CO2e, Low levy = $30-120)