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Non-governmental organization (NGO) Carbon War Room has welcomed the announcement by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to mandate energy efficiency ratings for new ships and called for the standards to be applied to all vessels in the global shipping fleet, not just newbuilds.

"The IMO resolution signals a key shift in the regulatory landscape of shipping, which has hitherto not required, even at the national level, any improvement in the sector’s footprint, currently growing at between 3 percent and 4 pecent a year," Carbon War Room said.

Peter Boyd, COO of Carbon War Room, commented: "The IMO has an outstanding record in developing international agreements on safety and has drawn on this to make the first steps towards reducing the industry’s carbon footprint. We applaud the work of the Secretariat here in finding agreement in the international climate change debate.”

The Carbon War Room argues that widely available energy efficiency ratings offer a proven means of instituting best practice design in energy-intensive applications.

In December 2010, the organization launched shippingefficiency.org, which made energy efficiency ratings for the 60,000-strong ocean-going fleet freely available.

Boyd added: “There is a $70bn subsidy for environmental improvement in shipping, called fuel savings from more efficient vessels. The IMO decision on newbuilds should result in fuel savings of $5 billion annually by 2020, and CO2 reductions of over 20 million tonnes. The real prize for the planet and profitability is in the existing fleet. Today’s new standards if applied to all ships, not just newbuilds, would save the industry more than 220m tonnes of CO2 and $50bn a year. Chasing all profitable efficiency savings could save even more. This is a historic move by the IMO but there’s a bigger environmental and economic opportunity out there that’s too good to miss.”

Following the announcement, Carbon War Room said it will deliver a letter to IMO delegates calling for the mandatory use of energy efficiency ratings across the entire fleet, signed by 50 organizations, including owner-operators of 60 million tonnes-worth of vessels.

Signatories include Denmark’s Maersk Line (containers) and TORM, Canada’s Teekay, America’s Heidmar (tankers) and Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (ro-ro) of Norway/Sweden. German consumer electronics company Schneider Electric has also signed, along with the Port of Los Angeles and the NGO Forum for the Future.