The Lloyd’s List Podcast: Trafigura wants to add $300 per tonne of CO2 to its bunker bill, here’s why
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Commodities trader Trafigura is calling for ‘drastic’ measures to speed up the decarbonisation of shipping through a bunker levy charge as well as pushing for measures that include enforced slow steaming. Without urgent action, the industry risks costly regional confusion, slow update of zero-emission fuels and the inevitability of having decisions forced upon them. A level playing field is essential, argues this week’s podcast guest, Trafigura’s global head of fuel decarbonisation, Rasmus Bach Nielsen — the industry cannot afford not to take action
WITH the threat of a regional European approach to shipping’s decarbonisation dilemma now a tangible reality rather conceptual threat, the industry is once again left questioning whether its preferred global approach to reducing CO2 is progressing with sufficient pace.
We have seen a flurry of positioning papers, programmes and announcements in recent weeks and there is more to come, but one of the most interesting additions to the debate emerged this week from Trafigura, one of the biggest cargo interests in the world as well as a sizeable investor in ships over the course of this century.
Trafigura’s solution is a global carbon levy, which shipowners could pass on to charterers.
The intention being that the increase in operational costs would spur charterers to “change behaviour to reduce emissions, charter more efficient ships and switch to lower-carbon fuels”.
A carbon levy is not a new idea, but the fact that Trafigura has proposed a $250-$300 per tonne of carbon output price tag on the scheme is interesting, not least because this is the level Trafigura has calculated is needed “to close the competitiveness gap between carbon-intensive fuels and low- or zero-carbon alternatives”.
Joining Lloyd’s List Editor Richard Meade on the podcast this week to discuss the proposal and the ‘drastic’ measures he thinks are needed to speed up the decarbonisation of shipping is Trafigura’s head of global head of fuel decarbonisation, Rasmus Bach Nielsen.
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