IT’S gotten trickier in the past six months to get industry bosses to say whether they are for or against the Net-Zero Framework, which is back on the negotiating table at the International Maritime Organization next week.

That could be because outwardly supporting something US President Trump has vowed to destroy has become a real business risk, rather than just a PR can of worms.

But it’s also a reflection that the industry is in the middle of a highly complicated, multifaceted debate, which has already been partly derailed by geopolitics.

Everyone worries about the big questions: Who wins and who loses? Will the regulation do what it’s supposed to? Will the magic fuels become reality? What if they don’t, but we still end up paying?

The IMO is talking about legal text, and legal text is not where such “what-ifs” tend to sit comfortably.

But set aside for a moment the obvious conflict between those who want to sell oil and gas, and those who want to tax oil and gas (this is, admittedly, most of the difficulty), and the whole thing looks a lot more pedestrian.

The IMO’s GHG working group is debating some of the finer points this week, away from the cameras, and the tone has been constructive. Several sources described the events so far as “very boring”.

In our interview, the World Shipping Council’s Simon Bergulf makes the case for the IMO to keep at such work, rather than park the issue and throw away years of painfully won diplomatic progress.

He has plenty of gripes with the NZF, and several ideas for how to fix them. Many will doubtless disagree with those ideas, but that’s the point.

The only way to bridge these divides is for the IMO to be boring again. And to be brave.

Declan Bush
Senior reporter, Lloyd’s List

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