Book review: ‘IMO 2020: A Regulatory Tsunami’

Judging a book by its cover, Pablo Rodas-Martini’s “IMO 2020: A Regulatory Tsunami” appears to be about the Jan. 1 rule mandating the game-changing global switch to low-sulfur marine fuel. It’s actually about something more interesting: the likelihood of a much broader, decades-long, environmentally driven revolution in marine fuel and propulsion that merely kicks off with IMO 2020.

The story opens with a fascinating bit of shipping trivia, a circa-1919 document presented to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that details the benefits of replacing coal with oil for vessel propulsion, and steam power with diesel engines. The rationale back then was almost entirely economic — lower operating costs, faster speed. Yet ironically, there was an environmental angle even a century ago, as burning heavy fuel oil was “clean” compared to burning soot-spewing coal.

There have been two major revolutions in ocean-shipping propulsion so far: first, the switch from wind to coal-powered steam engines; second, to oil-powered combustion engines. According to Rodas-Martini, “If we were to add the decarbonization of the shipping industry [on top of IMO 2020], which will take several decades, result in carbon-neutral fuels, and provoke the building of ships with potentially radical designs, we could certainly talk about a third revolution.”

IMO 2020 is “a secondary battle” in this third revolution, whereas the decarbonization of the shipping industry is “the entire war.”

And while shipping’s proposed switch to carbon neutrality remains hypothetical, it’s already having real impacts on industry fundamentals.