🧃Ship Happens

Welcome to The Strawman, your daily climate newsletter. Today’s story is all about shipping, where the fuel of the future might accidentally be... a fossil?

Maersk, Methane, and the Methanol Maze

Maersk, the Danish shipping giant with a thing for green methanol, is raising the alarm about an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that's set to drop anchor at next month’s UN shipping summit. Their gripe? The proposed system doesn’t hit liquefied natural gas (LNG) hard enough. In fact, they say it might actually incentivise shipowners to pick LNG — a fossil fuel — over greener (but pricier) options like methanol.

The idea behind the ETS is to make dirty ships pay up: polluters would have to buy credits from cleaner vessels. But Maersk points out that LNG-powered ships would get a nice discount under current proposals, despite not being nearly as clean as they’re cracked up to be. Think of it as getting a gold star for using a reusable coffee cup — but it’s still filled with oil.

Credit Schemes vs Carbon Dreams

This upcoming meeting at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) isn’t just industry gossip — it’s the first real shot at a global carbon price for shipping, which currently emits about 3% of the world’s greenhouse gases. Countries are split between two camps: those pushing for a complex credit system (hello, China and Brazil), and those calling for a straightforward levy per tonne of emissions (shoutout to Pacific island nations drowning in irony).

The EU and Japan are trying to be diplomatic — backing both options at once. But according to Maersk, credit systems as currently designed would let LNG ships off easy, buying up to 48% fewer credits than their dirtier bunker-fuelled cousins, even though the carbon savings are much smaller.

A Levy to Make LNG Less Lovely

Critics — including researchers at UCL — say the solution is simple: slap a carbon levy on all fuels and use the revenue to subsidise genuinely green alternatives. No credits, no loopholes, just a price signal with bite. But of course, nothing at the IMO is ever that simple.

Maersk, for its part, has a compromise plan: combine a trading scheme with a levy and tweak the credit formula so it's based on total emissions. That way, LNG doesn’t get a free pass just for being slightly less awful. Is it a genius middle path or just another bureaucratic spaghetti bowl? Depends who you ask.

Either way, the outcome of this debate will steer the cost of doing business on the high seas — and determine whether the shipping industry actually decarbonises or just plays climate dress-up.

The takeaway

If regulators don’t plug the LNG loophole, we risk swapping dirty bunker fuel for a slightly cleaner fossil fuel and calling it a day. Not exactly full steam ahead.