The shipping industry expects to be stung by a carbon levy as momentum building from climate talks in Paris starting this month makes a cut to its greenhouse gas emissions likely.

 

Any tax - either a levy based on fuel use by diesel-driven ships or a market based mechanism - would add to rising costs for the industry, which transports 90 percent of world trade.

 

A draft Paris text makes scant mention of reducing CO2 from marine bunker fuels. Yet ship industry sources say some form of taxation is expected to come in the wake of any deal at the November 30-December 11 summit.

 

"We do expect that sooner or later shipping will be regulated on CO2," said John Kornerup Bang, lead advisor on climate change with Maersk Group, which owns the world's biggest container shipping line.

 

The latest IMO study showed shipping had reduced greenhouse gas emissions (C02) to 2.2 percent of the world total from 2.8 percent in the five-year period to 2012. The study projected CO2 shipping emissions would rise and could grow by 50 percent by 2050 depending on the pace of world trade and what action was taken.

 

Ship emissions were omitted from national commitments under the U.N’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which ceded control to its shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

 

The IMO has said it had already reduced airborne emissions via mandatory regulations, but it is seen by environmentalists as slow moving.

 

Last month, the European Commission set an end-2016 deadline for the IMO to present CO2-cutting measures, which Europe's shipping industry lobby said was "unrealistic".

 

Campaigners have urged tough targets for both shipping and aviation plus some kind of levy to be included in the text of a climate deal.

 

 

PHOTO: Vessels line the anchorage area in the southern coast of Singapore October 5, 2015.

CREDIT: REUTERS/EDGAR SU.