Shipping companies in Asia and around the globe are steaming ahead with efforts to minimize their carbon footprint as the urgency to decarbonize intensifies after a fairly smooth transition to the International Maritime Organization’s low-sulfur mandate for marine fuels.

The IMO in April 2018 laid out its strategy to reduce the shipping industry’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 by at least 50% from 2008 levels, and to reduce CO2 emissions per transport work by at least 40% by 2030.

Various non-government environmental organizations recently voiced support for the emission reductions at IMO’s virtual GHG talks in early July.

The NGOs in a joint statement said “good technical progress” made at the virtual event “revealed that a properly enforced goal-based operational efficiency measure would unlock net savings for the shipping industry, as well as reducing CO2 emissions, and … looks increasingly inevitable.”

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Shell, Deloitte Netherlands and Deloitte UK collaborated in a report released July 7 showing 95% of shipping executives interviewed worldwide viewed decarbonization as important, or a top-three priority, and nearly 80% noted its importance had increased significantly over the past 18 months…