The balance of focus between past, present and future compliance is key, Lehtovaara believes. “The attention that owners will have to pay to emissions and ballast water regulations risks eating up all their capacity to handle other, upcoming compliance issues,” he says. “Both these measures are based on decisions from many years back, but other important legislation continues to be passed and will demand attention as well.”
Lehtovaara adds that it is important for the industry take into consideration the time scale of 2050, when the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is calling for a 50 percent reduction in marine greenhouse gas emissions compared with 2008. “Those in power who have made the decisions will be gone long before these regulations take effect, and it is essential to prevent the regulatory environment from fragmenting before we can reach the goal.”
Progress toward the major goals will require more precise decision making at many levels, Lehtovaara maintains. He offers that a regulatory push could start with domestic traffic: “Goals must be fed by incentives, and perhaps incentives will also come from elsewhere than the IMO.” Local and regional authorities can place caps on emissions, he says, but if some are stricter than others, the risk of unclear consequences for shipowners must be dealt with: “Those who don’t comply could simply be excluded from local trade, but the responsibility could also be placed unjustly on the global foreign fleet.”
That said, Lehtovaara recognizes that compliance will always be crucial to trading. “Owners and operators must comply in order to work. This is precisely why companies are spending so much time and resources on ballast water, sulphur cap and greenhouse gas emissions compliance.” The key, he believes, will be for industry stakeholders to resolve the challenges of complying with these important regulatory milestones, while putting aside additional resources to meet future compliance demands.
