The road to EU ETS implementation

To put it plainly: come the implementation date of 1 January 2024, BSM will be ready for EU ETS. We have made significant investments into our Fleet Performance and Carbon Accounting teams. Both are in full swing writing the procedural framework as well as creating the EU ETS dashboards and carbon accounting reports in our smartPAL software.

Initial and flexible OPEX budget proposals have been provided to our customers based on the understanding that EU ETS rules and regulations may keep changing and that customers will require different types of service levels depending on the set-up on their end.

Our services for efficient EU ETS management

Under the new rules, ship managers can serve shipowners by providing and administering data, reporting, carbon accounting, carbon certificate trading and EU registry services as required. But a shipowner does not have to part from the valuable carbon certificates prior to submission. Moreover, under the previous interpretation, there was a significant risk to compliant shipowners who could have been affected by defaulting shipowners due to a ship manager’s shared DOC. The old interpretation of the rules could have led to litigation and years of uncertainty – unacceptable given the amounts at stake.

There is still need for further clarification of key questions, such as responsibility in case of ownership change and the practicability of the registration process itself. However, from working directly with members of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action over the last few months, I am happy to report that their understanding of our somewhat complex maritime industry is good and that they are committed to producing a realistic ruleset.