Press release

New EU Maritime Transport Assessment Reveals Sustainability Challenges

February 4, 2025

The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and European Environment Agency (EEA) today released their joint assessment of the climate and environmental footprint of shipping, showing that despite some progress, there is still much work to be done to ensure that shipping can be considered a clean and sustainable activity. The second edition of the European Maritime Transport Environmental Report (EMTER 2025) shows that while sulphur emissions were successfully reduced by 70% since 2014 thanks to effective regulation, other environmental pressures continue to mount.

OceanCare urges the European Union build on the success story of sulphur reduction and use it as a role model for further regulatory measures to protect marine biodiversity from underwater noise and prevent whale deaths from ship strikes.

Fabienne McLellan, Managing Director of OceanCare, panellist at the report’s high-level launch event in Lisbon, commented on the findings of EMTER 2025:

“This report delivers a clear message: binding measures to protect the planet work. The dramatic reduction in sulphur emissions proves that effective regulation benefits environment, public health and industry. With shipping being the main source for radiated ocean noise, ship strikes posing a major threat to endangered whales and marine turtles and its greenhouse gas emissions increasing, we must apply this lesson to make slow steaming mandatory. Reducing speed would cut emissions, save whales, and reduce ocean noise – all through one simple cost-effective measure that can be implemented immediately.

“If we want shipping to become the most sustainable way of moving goods over longer distances, we urgently need to reduce its climate and environmental footprint. OceanCare wants to work towards this with all stakeholders involved. Reducing vessel speed represents a measure that requires no new technology – just political will, while at the same time creating a level playing field for all players.

“As we face growing environmental pressures and a challenging global political climate, Europe must lead the transformation of shipping into truly sustainable transport.”

OceanCare reiterates that globally reducing vessel speed by just 20% could:

  • Cut CO2 emissions by up to 24%
  • Reduce underwater noise by up to 70%
  • Decrease the risk of fatal whale collisions by up to 78%

OceanCare’s international campaign Because Our Planet Is Blue calls for mandatory speed reduction measures as one of six key actions needed to protect ocean health. The organization will present these demands at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice this June.

The EMTER 2025 launch event will be streamed live on YouTube from EMSA headquarters in Lisbon on Tuesday, from 9:15 UTC / 10:15 CET. The roundtable discussion on “Pollution and the Marine Ecosystems” with OceanCare CEO Fabienne McLellan starts at 14:30 UTC / 15:30 CET.

Notes to Editors

The European Maritime Transport Environmental Report (EMTER) by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA), the second edition of which has been published today 4 February 2025, provides a helpful overview of the climate and environmental impacts by the maritime transport sector within the European Union. This report examines the progress made in achieving decarbonisation and environmental targets in Europe, while showing the most relevant trends, key challenges and opportunities in the transition to sustainability in the maritime transport sector.

The climate and environmental footprint of maritime transport remains very high in all aspects, except for some improvements in specific areas, such as the significant reduction in sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions, achieved thanks to the entry into force of several regulations in this regard. This important achievement is a further demonstration that only through regulation can significant progress be made in protecting the environment and public health, while at the same time creating a level playing field for all players in the sector that avoids generating competitive disadvantages among companies.

Air pollution emissions pose a threat to human health and the environment. Shipping is by far the largest contributor to overall SOx emissions from transport in the EU. SOx emissions have decreased in the EU by around 70% from 2014 to 2023, largely thanks to the introduction of SOx Emission Control Areas (SECAs) in northern Europe, which mandate very significant reductions in the percentage of sulphur in ship fuel. This was compounded by the entry into force in 2020 of an International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation that established a maximum sulphur limit allowed globally, although in SECAs that limit is much lower. As of May 1, 2025, the Mediterranean Sea will become the third SECA in European waters, joining the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, which were designated as SECAs since the early 2000s. In addition, countries in the northeast Atlantic are considering the creation of an ECA, possibly by 2027. These measures will bring significant health and environmental benefits, improving air quality across the EU region.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, shipping has worsened its climate impact in recent years. On the one hand, CO2 emissions from this activity have increased annually since 2015 in the EU (except in 2020 due to the COVID 19 pandemic), reaching 137.5 million tons in 2022, 8.5% more than the previous year, although still below pre-pandemic levels. On the other hand, methane (CH4) emissions from shipping at least doubled between 2018 and 2023, constituting 26% of total methane emissions from the transport sector in 2022. Methane (the main component of liquefied natural gas, LNG), in addition to being a fossil fuel, is itself a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 80 times higher than that of CO2 in a 20-year perspective.

Underwater radiated noise (URN) generated by ships as they move through the water (mainly due to the cavitation phenomenon produced by the movement of the propellers), continues to be a serious problem, which worsens as shipping activity increases, as is the case in several areas of the Mediterranean. URN negatively affects all marine species, including cetaceans, which rely on sound for important functions such as localisation and communication. The EMTER report identifies areas in the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar, parts of the Adriatic Sea, the Dardanelles Strait and in some regions of the Baltic Sea as areas of high sound pressure level (SPL). The good news is that the EMTER report concludes that the prospective analysis indicates that the joint implementation of technical and operational URN and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation measures can lead to a substantial reduction in URN for all ship types and in all regions by 2050. In some cases, this reduction could reach up to 70% compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

Ship strikes are the primary source of human-induced mortality for whales in regions with high levels of marine traffic, like in the north-western Mediterranean. The EMTER 2025 report recognizes that there has been a significant increase in collision risk in Natura 2000 areas in all marine sub-regions between 2017 and 2022. In particular, the eastern parts of the Greater North Sea, the southern coast of the Bay of Biscay, the Gibraltar region and parts of the Aegean Sea are hotspots with a significant increase in the risk of vessel collision with whales and turtles.

In the last legislature, the EU created the fundamental basis for the decarbonisation process of maritime transport by updating the climate regulation related to the maritime sector in the context of the European Green Deal. The “Fit for 55” package involved the extension of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to the maritime transport sector, as well as the introduction of legislation aimed at increasing the uptake of sustainable fuels through the FuelEU Maritime Regulation, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, the Energy Taxation Directive and the Renewable Energy Sources Directive.

However, clean zero-emission fuels will not be available on a large scale for at least more than a decade and in the meantime the EU must adopt regulatory measures to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to make use of operational measures such as reducing ship speed and techniques such wind power for navigational support.

Speed reduction has multiple positive environmental effects. Reducing the speed of shipping, in addition to reducing the risk of collisions with cetaceans, leads to fuel savings and, consequently, a reduction in CO2 emissions as well as air pollutants (SOx, NOx and black carbon). CO2 emissions could be reduced by around 13% and 24% if ships reduced their speed by 10% and 20% respectively.

This measure also makes it possible to reduce the level of underwater noise emitted by ships in the vast majority of cases. Specifically, current data show that a 10% reduction in ship speed across the world fleet could reduce shipping noise by 40%. Regarding collisions, a 10% decrease in speed would result in a 50% reduction in risk, while a 20% decrease in speed could accomplish a 78% decrease in collision risk. In summary, among the various operational measures available, reducing ship speed is the most cost-effective way to reduce the environmental impact of shipping. It is an immediately applicable measure and does not require technological modifications.