The Intersessional Working meeting begins today in London Group on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships (ISWG-GHG) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) which is considered crucial to defining the global strategy to proceed with the decarbonization of shipping. A meeting in view of which the last week the European shipowners' association ECSA, the association of European airlines A4E and the association European environmentalist Transport & Environment (T&E) have recommended that the European Commission take measures to ensure that the maritime transport and aviation sectors can have the clean fuels needed to reduce their emissions by increasingly reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Among the clean fuels considered, however, some could even worsen the climate impact of the shipping and aviation. This is supported by Transport itself & Environment which today presented the results of a study by the consulting firm Cerulogy which highlights the impact that the increasing use of palm oil and soybean oil as biodiesel could have on deforestation. "The IMO's green strategy - warned T&E - could release 270 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2030 compared to today, with a worse than doing nothing." The association explained that in 2030 60% of biofuels used by shipping, compared to the current less than 1%, could come from palm and soybeans, with a serious impact on deforestation as well as on prices of foodstuffs, as around 300 million bottles of vegetable oil could be diverted to the maritime transport sector rather than to the feed.

The Cerulogy study specifies that in 2030 the use for the Decarbonization of palm oil and soybean oil shipping could account for almost two-thirds of the biodiesel used by the sector as they are the cheapest fuel to make shipping compliant with the strategy of decarbonization. The research underlines that this would cause a serious problem for the climate, since the oil of Palm and soybean are responsible for two to three times higher even than shipping fuels which currently produce the largest quantities of CO2 if we take into account taking into account the effects of deforestation and the necessary remediation of the land. The shipping sector, in fact - it should be noted - would need huge extensions of agricultural land and in 2030 to produce sufficient crops to meet the growing demand of biofuels by maritime transport would be 34 million hectares are needed, equal to the entire area of the Germany. This - according to the study - could also have severe impact on food supplies as land used for agriculture should be converted to the cultivation of crops for biofuels, resulting in burning vegetable oil in ships that would be stolen to the food industry.

"To feed merchant ships through the deforestation," noted Constance Dijkstra, responsible for the T&E shipping - is a very bad idea. Burning crops for fuel is harmful to the planet and for global food security. The IMO - has highlighted - should consider the climate impact of "bad" biofuels to avoid making more Evil than good."

Noting, moreover, that shipping companies such as MSC and CMA CGM have invested in so-called waste biofuels such as used cooking oil and animal fats, T&E found that These biofuels will likely be able to cover only a small part of the projected demand for biofuel for the shipping since their availability is limited. "For example," explained T&E, "only one ship traveling between China and Brazil would require the waste oil produced annually by more than two thousand McDonald's restaurants, while for making it sail with animal fats would require over a million pigs".

Transport & Environment therefore urged the IMO to define clearly which are the zero-emission and upcoming fuels to zero excluding biofuels linked to deforestation, limiting biofuels produced from food crops and incentivizing, instead, hydrogen-based green fuels.