IMO 2030 & 2050 GHG targets

Shipping is global, so its climate rules have to be too. National pledges do not bind a Panama-flagged ship trading between Singapore and Rotterdam; only the International Maritime Organization, the UN body that sets the rules for international shipping, can. For years the IMO's ambition lagged the rest of the economy. That changed in July 2023, when its member states adopted a revised GHG strategy built around a single headline: net-zero by or around 2050. It is the trajectory that everything else — the EU's ETS, FuelEU and the IMO's own efficiency rules — now points towards.

The headline ambition

The 2023 strategy is expressed as "levels of ambition" against the 2008 baseline year:

By	Ambition (total annual GHG vs 2008)
2030 (checkpoint)	At least −20%, striving for −30%
2040 (checkpoint)	At least −70%, striving for −80%
By or around 2050	Net-zero

Two details matter. First, these are total emissions figures, not just per-ship intensity, which is far more demanding because the world fleet and seaborne trade are still growing. Second, the strategy also targets uptake of zero or near-zero GHG fuels — aiming for them to make up at least 5%, striving for 10%, of the energy used by international shipping by 2030 — recognising that the long-run goal cannot be met by efficiency alone.

Indicative now, binding soon

The 2030 and 2040 figures are framed as indicative checkpoints rather than hard law, which has led some to dismiss the strategy as aspirational. That misreads where the IMO is heading. The strategy is the political agreement; the legal force comes from the mid-term measures the IMO is now developing, which are designed to combine two instruments:

• A global marine fuel standard that progressively limits the GHG intensity of the energy ships use — conceptually similar to FuelEU but worldwide.
• A GHG pricing or levy mechanism that puts an economic cost on emissions, with revenue intended in part to support the transition.

Together these would turn the 2050 ambition into an enforceable, fleet-wide regime — the global counterpart to the regional rules already biting in Europe.

What already applies: EEXI and CII

The IMO did not wait for the mid-term measures. Two short-term measures entered force in 2023 to start bending the curve immediately:

• EEXI, the Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index, a one-off technical standard requiring existing ships to meet a minimum design-efficiency level — often met by power limitation.
• CII, the Carbon Intensity Indicator, which gives every cargo and cruise ship over 5,000 GT an annual operational efficiency rating from A to E, with the thresholds tightening each year.

EEXI fixes how efficient a ship is built to be; CII tracks how efficiently it is actually run. Both are the practical, in-force start of the journey towards the 2030 checkpoint.

2023 was the year shipping stopped arguing about whether to decarbonise and started arguing about how fast. Net-zero around 2050 is now the shared destination. The shift in the IMO's 2023 GHG strategy

Who the targets bind — and why ships are growing more transparent

Because the IMO regime applies to ships by flag and by trade rather than by owner nationality, it reaches the whole world fleet — including vessels under open registries. As pricing and fuel-standard measures arrive, a ship's efficiency, fuel and emissions record become commercial facts that charterers, financiers and insurers want to see. That is pushing the same demand for transparent, vessel-level data that already drives sanctions screening: a clear, permanent record of each hull.

Marifest holds the vessel particulars that sit behind every one of these measures — type, size, flag and operator — across 97,000+ vessels, each anchored to its IMO number. Read a ship in the registry, watch the fleet on the live map, or look up terms such as EEXI and 2008 baseline in the glossary.