Shipping emissions rise as Europe rushes to reduce use of fossil fuels

Western countries’ unilateral sanctions slapped Moscow with ignite even more man-made carbon dioxide emissions from the shipping industry as Europe rejiggers energy supply chains away from Russia by sourcing energy products from far away.

Jan Dieleman, Cargill Inc.’s head of ocean transportation business, told Bloomberg that European importers are hiring tankers for long-distance hauls of energy products from countries halfway around the world.

If it weren’t for the sanctions, natural gas and other refined energy products would flow via pipelines from Russia to Europe.

But since Europe is hellbent on rapidly shifting its entire energy supply chain away from Russia. EU importers are hiring tankers to source liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Asia.

Dieleman said higher fuel costs for vessels mean ship operators are switching to dirtier-burning fuels like diesel bunker fuel or crude oil on these long-haul trips.

Today, most ships burn bunker fuel. Typically, this is the dregs left over at the end of the refinery process. It is an environmental nightmare. It is heavy and toxic, doesn’t evaporate, and emits more sulfur than other fuels.

Like aviation, shipping isn’t covered by the Paris Agreement on climate change because of the international nature of the industry. The industry simply says that they are doing a good job building more efficient vessels and retrofitting older ships.

The emissions from 15 of these mega-ships match those from all the cars in the world. International shipping produces nearly one billion tons of CO2 emissions, which is approximately 2% to 3% of global man-made emissions.

And if the shipping industry were a country, it would be ranked between Germany and Japan as the sixth-largest contributor to global CO2 emissions.

Meanwhile, EU countries are aggressively restarting fossil fuel power plants ahead of what could be a very dark and cold winter.

Some governments have even asked residents to burn their trees in the garden or forests for firewood to heat their homes as the energy crisis could induce rolling blackouts during peak demand hours.

So the whole strong climate action EU has been promoting to de-carbonize its grid to save the planet is at risk of unraveling this winter.

The very fact that Europe has to source LNG from Asia on longer routes while vessels burn dirtier fuel is entirely hypocritical to the bloc’s stance about saving the planet.

Oil Price.com / ABC Flash Point Carbon Footprint Emissions News 2022.