The Red Sea crises has led to a “staggering” increase in container ship CO2 emissions
The latest Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight analyses the “dramatic reversal” in years of progress in reducing the container shipping industry’s carbon footprint.
The ongoing crisis in the Red Sea and the rerouteing of vessels south of Africa, has led to a staggering 45% increase in CO2 emissions from container shipping in the European Union in 2024, according to mandatory EU emissions data under the EU Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification regulations. While the overall shipping sector saw a 10% rise in CO2 emissions, the impact on container shipping has been disproportionately severe.
Sea-Intelligence chief executive Alan Murphy said, “If, purely hypothetically, we assumed there was never a Red Sea crisis and the container lines would again in 2024 have reduced their total emissions by 4%, this would have led to total emissions of 35M tonnes in 2024. Instead, the reported reality was emissions of 53M tonnes. Assuming the primary cause of the emissions increase in 2024 is due to the round-Africa routeing, then the actions of the Houthis have caused an added level of CO2 emissions in 2024 related to container shipping of 18M tonnes. This is essentially the same as the carbon emissions from the country of Cambodia.”
He added the Red Sea crisis has, however, not had a measurable impact on other shipping segments than container shipping, as no major increase is recorded in 2024 for these segments.
