Monday, 7 September 2026

Four days of closed-door talks in London have improved the chances of a relatively ambitious deal on shipping emissions, observers told Climate Home News. The industry accounts for 3% of global emissions, according to the same report.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, reported "constructive discussions" and "genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress", according to Climate Home News.

Government positions are lopsided in favour of action. UCL analysis cited by Climate Home News found that, among delegations that expressed a view at the talks, 38 backed a Net-Zero Framework-style solution and 17 opposed it.

Adoption is a numbers game with a high bar. A new framework can pass if two-thirds of countries present and signed up to Marpol Annex VI vote in favour, as they did in April 2025, according to Climate Home News. Just over 100 states endorse that regulation.

That threshold was cleared once and then reversed. In October 2025, following a high-profile intervention by President Donald Trump and threats of US sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone adoption of the Net-Zero Framework for a year, Climate Home News reported.

The design of the pricing instrument determines whether the sector's own targets are reachable. IMarEST analysis, cited by Climate Home News, says only a Pacific proposal to levy ships' total emissions, rather than only those above a set level, would meet the industry's goals of cutting emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040, and reaching net zero "by or around, i.e. close to 2050".

The calendar is now tight. Additional talks run from November 23-27 and from November 30 to December 3, before a potentially final round of official negotiations opens on December 4, according to Climate Home News.

The gap between the 38 supportive delegations and the two-thirds voting rule is the arithmetic that decides the outcome. Because the ballot counts only states present and party to Marpol Annex VI, attendance in the December round matters as much as declared positions. The postponement secured in October 2025 showed that a majority of voting nations can be moved after a framework has already won a vote.

The observers' read of the London round is that a relatively ambitious outcome is more likely than before, not that it is settled.

Yara has inaugurated a carbon capture facility at its Sluiskil ammonia and fertilizer plant in the Netherlands with capacity to capture and liquefy up to 800,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

The captured stream comes from ammonia production and is liquefied and held temporarily at the site, OEDigital reported. From there, Northern Lights vessels carry the CO2 to Øygarden in Norway.

Northern Lights will inject the CO2 for permanent storage around 2,600 meters below the seabed, according to the same report.

Over the next 15 years, the project is expected to capture and store about 12 million tonnes of CO2, OEDigital reported.

The facility follows an agreement between Yara and Northern Lights signed in 2023. That deal links industrial CO2 capture in the Netherlands to permanent offshore storage in Norway.

Svein Tore Holsether, President and CEO of Yara International, said the Sluiskil facility proves that large-scale industrial decarbonization is possible today.