A quarter of Europe’s shipping will be fossil gas-powered by 2030 as ”misguided EU sustainability targets” encourage uptake of LNG, a new Transport & Environment (T&E) study shows.
This will lock in fossil fuel use for decades while bringing limited benefits to the climate, according to the clean transport campaign group.
“The shipping industry is one of the world’s biggest polluters and is heavily reliant on fossil fuels. The old narrative of gas as transitional fuel just doesn’t hold. We cannot afford to shift from one fossil fuel to another. It will not get us to zero emissions by 2050 and, by putting more methane into the atmosphere may even fry the planet faster,” Delphine Gozillon , sustainable shipping officer at T&E, said.
Last year, the European Commission proposed a law requiring ship operators to reduce the lifecycle carbon footprint of the fuels. The EU targets, which are tightened over time, are designed to gradually squeeze out the most polluting oil-powered ships, and, in theory, drive the uptake of sustainable fuels.
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