Three potential benefits of the EU and IMO's landmark efforts to monitor carbon dioxide emissions from shipping

International shipping accounts for around 2.2% of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions (Smith et al., 2014). Emissions from international shipping are expected to increase by 50%–250% by 2050, mainly due to the growth of the world maritime trade (Smith et al., 2014). However,efforts to control CO₂ emissions from the global shipping industry are absent from the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement. Therefore, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has released an ambitious strategy to cut the total annual greenhouse gas emissions of shipping by at least 50% by 2050, compared with 2008 (IMO, 2018).
To promote the reduction of CO₂ emissions from maritime transport in a cost-effective manner, the European Union (EU) and IMO have introduced two similar albeit separate regimes. The EU has laid down rules for the accurate monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of CO₂ emissions from ships with a gross tonnage above 5000 arriving at, within, or departing from ports under the jurisdiction of a Member State (EU, 2015). The fuel consumption and CO₂ emission data per ship for the 2018 reporting period of the MRV regime have already been published. The IMO has implemented a data collection system (DCS) that requires ships with a gross tonnage of 5000 and above to report verified fuel consumption data via their flag states (IMO, 2016). The first reporting period of the IMO DCS is from January 1 to December 31, 2019. In contrast with the MRVregime, which publishes the CO₂ emissions of each ship, the IMO DCS will anonymize ships’ names and IMO numbers in its publications.