The UK ETS Authority has announced that it is now consulting on proposals to expand the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to include emissions from the maritime sector and also recognise ‘non-pipeline transport methods’, such as shipping, road or rail, for moving captured carbon into geological storage.
The UK ETS was launched in 2021 to encourage decarbonisation across aviation, power and industry.
In a statement posted on the UK government’s information website yesterday (28 November), the UK ETS Authority said that: ‘By expanding the scheme to include the maritime sector, businesses with ships operating domestic voyages would need to obtain allowances for every tonne of carbon they emit. This will ensure that the price of fuels used by the sector better reflects their environmental impacts.’
The UK ETS Authority ministers Sarah Jones, Huw Irranca-Davies, Gillian Martin, Andrew Muir, James Murray and Mike Kane added that: ‘Expanding the UK ETS to include maritime and recognising non-pipeline transport for carbon capture and storage will encourage investment into clean technologies, a vital growth industry in the UK.’
The UK government envisages that maritime will be incorporated in the ETS from 2026 and said that the consultation process on the inclusion of maritime in the ETS is seeking views on:
- the scope of the scheme (definition of a domestic voyage, thresholds for inclusion, the inclusion of methane and nitrous oxide emissions and exemptions from the scheme)
- details around how to adjust the UK ETS cap to include emissions from the maritime sector
- participating in the scheme (regulatory regime and operator requirements, monitoring, reporting and verification, point of obligation and guidance)
- impacts of the scheme (decarbonisation impacts, potential distributional impacts and carbon leakage risk; equality considerations)
- potential future expansion of the UK ETS to additional maritime emissions, with a future review of the threshold and coverage of international routes.
Click here for more information on how to participate in the consultation on expanding the UK ETS to include the maritime sector.
