Alison Shaw is with the Clean Shipping Coalition; Natacha Stamatiou is head of IMO engagement on reducing emissions for the Environmental Defense Fund; Jamie Yates is climate and renewable energy manager for Pacific Environment; and Mark Lutes is senior advisor for global climate policy at WWF.
This year marks an important milestone for global climate diplomacy, with the United Nations finally taking action on one of the world’s biggest polluters: international shipping.
In April 2025, governments reached a historic agreement at the UN’s shipping arm – the International Maritime Organization (IMO) – on the Net-Zero Framework.
The policy will be the world’s first and binding global emission pricing on any sector. For organisations like ours that have been following the IMO debates for several years, this result was proof that climate multilateralism is still alive and can deliver meaningful action.
What makes the Net-Zero Framework unique is that it includes an emission pricing element requiring shipping companies to pay a penalty fee for failing to comply with carbon intensity targets for the energy they use on ships. These penalties are projected to generate $10–15 billion annually from 2028 in climate finance.
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Yet, while the policy’s adoption in October will mark a breakthrough, critical details that still remain to be decided will make or break this flagship climate law before it enters into force in 2027.
The most contentious issue yet to be finalised is which types of energy will be incentivised on ships as alternatives to fossil fuels – in other words, which alternative fuels will be recognised as delivering genuine, deep emissions reductions.
Gas and biofuel risk
The Framework is currently “fuel neutral,” meaning that all fuel types could qualify, regardless of their actual climate performance. This opens the door to cheap but harmful solutions, like high-risk biofuels and fossil gas, known as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
High-risk biofuels, like much of those derived from soy and palm oil, are especially concerning. Their production all too often is linked to deforestation, violation of land rights, especially for Indigenous peoples and customary landowners, water stress, and food insecurity, and in some cases, even higher emissions than fossil fuels.
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The scale of the problem is quite staggering and the consequences could be disastrous for global food security and soil health worldwide. A study has estimated that satisfying shipping’s biofuel demand could require up to 35 million hectares of land by 2030 – an area roughly the size of Germany – and consume the equivalent of 300 million bottles of vegetable oil per day.
The impacts of high-risk biofuels have already been felt in communities and lands in Latin America, where expansion of soy production is the second-largest driver of deforestation. In South-East Asia, 45% of palm oil plantations have occupied previously forested land and have expanded by 370% between 1990 and 2023. Communities in these regions bear the brunt, often losing their land and livelihoods in the process.
Quantitative accounting
A safeguard against these harms is to quantitatively account for indirect land-use change (ILUC) emissions. ILUCs occur when agricultural land is diverted to biofuel production pushing food or feed production into new areas and driving the destruction of carbon-rich ecosystems.
If ILUC emissions are ignored, cheap biofuels will inevitably flood the market making them the go-to solution for meeting the shipping climate targets, jeopardizing shipping’s climate targets.
Worse, large-scale investment in high-risk biofuels could slow the development and uptake of truly sustainable alternatives, such as green e-fuels, given the limited supply of renewable resources and investment capital.
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To unlock this finance, governments should provide clear incentives for zero-emission solutions such as maximising energy efficiency and wind propulsion, batteries and solar energy, and renewable e-fuels. Only these genuinely clean alternatives will help achieve short- and medium-term climate goals while keeping transition costs down and ensuring renewable energy isn’t wasted.
Make fuel from renewables
In the long run, shipping’s decarbonisation hinges on the large-scale production and adoption of e-fuels made from renewable electricity. Growing demand for such fuels would help secure investments in future and existing projects especially in countries with strong potential for green hydrogen production, many of them located in Africa and South America.
Equally important is ensuring that the revenues generated by the Framework – billions of dollars annually – are distributed fairly. The funds must not only assist the maritime sectors of the most climate-vulnerable nations but also drive the development of resilient renewable energy infrastructure that advances the transition of the shipping sector.
This October and in the months ahead, we – the Clean Shipping Coalition, Environmental Defense Fund, Pacific Environment, and WWF – will follow the IMO’s negotiations. Our role will be to provide governments with rigorous, science-based analysis to ensure decisions are taken in the interest of the climate, biodiversity, and communities worldwide. With the right choices, the IMO can set shipping on course for a cleaner, healthier future.
The post How high-risk biofuels could sink a flagship climate law for global shipping appeared first on Climate Home News.
How high-risk biofuels could sink a flagship climate law for global shipping
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.