EU must act now to ensure access to clean fuels, industry players highlight

ECSA European Shipownersand Airlines for Europe (A4E) have once again urged the European Commission (EC) as well as national governments to “ensure bold action“to speed up the availability of affordable clean maritime and aviation fuels and support production in Europe.

As ECSA has reiterated in its call to the commission, the EC’s Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP) needs to be “ambitious” and it must establish strong commitments and concrete steps in order to make environmentally friendly fuels more widely available for hard-to-decarbonize sectors like maritime transport.

Such actions are described as ‘pivotal’, given the significance of a sector like shipping for Europe’s economic competitiveness, connectivity, energy independence as well as security, officials from ECSA have shared.

Specifically, the steps that the agency has highlighted in its address to the European Commission are as follows:

• Invest EU and national Emissions Trading System (ETS) revenues back into the decarbonization of critical sectors such as shipping;
• Bolster manufacturing capacity