The Funnel Vision
Funnel's vision is for international shipping to be carbon neutral and fossil fuel free with no interruption to the movement of cargo between ports.
Funnel seeks to deliver this vision by:
- Communicating the commercial benefits of sustainability to the maritime industry.
- Building awareness of commercially viable technologies that reduce shipping emissions.
- Accelerating the uptake of these new technologies across the global fleet.
- Encouraging the development and use of sustainable algae bio-fuels for bunker.
- Supplying quality carbon offsets from innovative abatement and sequestration projects.
- Delivering the carbon finance from offsetting back into the industry, in a closed loop, to hyper-accelerate the development and uptake of emission-saving maritime technologies.
Where is International Shipping now?
International shipping is currently characterised by the following elements:
- Total reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels.
- Fleet-wide bunker consumption over 350 million metric tonnes per annum.
- Annual CO 2 emissions close to 1 billion metric tonnes.
- Cumulative shipping emissions in the atmosphere exceeding 23 billion metric tonnes.
- Emissions continuing to grow, by about 5% each year.
- On a tonnes per mile basis, shipping remains the most fuel-efficient mode of transport.
Where to next?
The prevailing approach to reduce shipping emissions through improved energy efficiency measures is hamstrung by the continual growth in global trade volumes.
Although a globally agreed mandate for targeted emission reductions for shipping has yet to be finalised, the prospect of mandatory controls and regulation remains on the near horizon. Even without mandatory controls in place, the carbon impact of the supply chain is now well and truly in the spotlight.
- Shippers are changing the way they assess the true cost of their freight choices.
- Owner/Operators need to pro-actively manage the carbon footprint of their fleets.
- Localised authorities are increasingly enacting their own environmental controls.
- As the regulators continue to fight it out, the market itself will drive change.
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