From Strategy to Framework: Why a Mid-Term Measure

6 min read

What you'll take away Place the Net-Zero Framework in its context: the 2023 IMO GHG Strategy's net-zero ambition and checkpoints, and why the short-term efficiency measures could not deliver them alone.

The Net-Zero Framework did not appear out of nowhere at MEPC 83. It is the delivery vehicle for promises the IMO's member states made two years earlier, and you cannot judge a vehicle without knowing the destination.

What the 2023 Strategy promised

In July 2023, MEPC 80 adopted the 2023 IMO Strategy on Reduction of GHG Emissions from Ships, resolution MEPC.377(80), replacing the more cautious 2018 initial strategy (IMO). Three commitments matter for everything that follows:

  • Net-zero GHG emissions from international shipping by or around, i.e., close to, 2050: the hedged phrasing is in the text itself.
  • Indicative checkpoints on the way: total annual GHG emissions down by at least 20%, striving for 30%, by 2030; and by at least 70%, striving for 80%, by 2040, both measured against 2008.
  • Zero or near-zero GHG technologies, fuels and energy sources to supply at least 5%, striving for 10%, of the energy used by international shipping by 2030.

Read those numbers carefully. They are absolute totals for the world fleet, not per-ship efficiency figures, and they are pinned to 2008, a year since which seaborne trade has grown substantially. A fleet that carries more cargo in 2040 than in 2008 while emitting 70% less has not become 70% more efficient; it has changed what it burns. That distinction is the whole reason the framework exists.

Total annual fleet GHG emissions, % of 2008 at least striving for 100% 50% 0 20% cut 30% cut 70% cut 80% cut net-zero 2008 2030 2040 2050 by or around Point labels show the cut against 2008; the checkpoints are indicative, not limits on individual ships.
The 2023 Strategy drawn as a trajectory: absolute fleet emissions measured against 2008, with the minimum ambition and the "striving for" variant at each checkpoint. The strategy fixes the checkpoints, not the path between them: the segments are indicative.

One more thing the strategy is not: law. A strategy resolution binds no ship. It sets "levels of ambition" and instructs the organization to build the regulation that can reach them.

Why the existing measures could not carry it

The IMO had been regulating GHG since well before 2023: EEDI efficiency requirements for newbuilds, the EEXI for existing ships, and the CII operational rating, all sitting in MARPOL Annex VI (IMO's GHG work explainer). These are genuinely useful, and structurally incapable of delivering net-zero. All of them reward burning less conventional fuel per unit of transport work. Hull forms, engines and operations improve by percentage points; the checkpoints demand cuts of 70% and more.

The missing piece is economic. A zero-GHG fuel, green ammonia, green methanol, e-diesel, costs a multiple of the fuel oil it replaces, and an efficiency rating pays none of that premium. A shipowner who did the right thing would simply lose money to a competitor who did not. Closing that gap needs two things working together: a technical element, a goal-based fuel standard that ratchets down the GHG intensity of the energy ships use, and an economic element: a pricing mechanism that makes emitting cost money and abating earn it. The 2023 Strategy called this the basket of candidate mid-term measures, and set a timetable: measures approved and adopted in 2025, entering into force around 2027.

The basket becomes a framework

MEPC 83, in April 2025, delivered the first half of that timetable: it approved the IMO Net-Zero Framework: the basket merged into a single instrument, drafted as amendments to MARPOL Annex VI, combining a global fuel standard with GHG pricing. Approval, however, is not adoption. Adoption was postponed at an extraordinary session in October 2025 and deferred again at MEPC 84 in May 2026, leaving the framework approved but pending: a record lesson 6 walks through in full, dates attached.

Everything in between belongs to the approved text and does not change while the diplomacy runs: the mechanism (lesson 2), the numbers (lesson 3), the fuels and the Fund (lesson 4), and the costs (lesson 5).

A habit worth adopting from this lesson onward: when someone quotes you "a 2030 target", ask which one. The strategy's 20% is an absolute cut in fleet-wide emissions; the framework's 2030 figure, as you will see, is a percentage reduction in the GHG intensity of energy used per megajoule. They are related, they are not interchangeable, and people mix them up in meetings every week.

Check yourself

1. The 2023 IMO GHG Strategy commits international shipping to reach net-zero GHG emissions by when?
2. The 2030 indicative checkpoint calls for cutting total annual GHG emissions by at least how much?
3. Against which baseline year are the strategy's 2030 and 2040 checkpoints measured?
4. Why were EEXI and CII alone not enough to deliver the strategy's ambitions?
5. In the strategy's basket of mid-term measures, the technical element is what?
6. Which of these are levels of ambition or checkpoints in the 2023 IMO GHG Strategy?

Select all that apply.

7. The 2023 IMO GHG Strategy is itself a legally binding regulation on individual ships.
8. The 2040 indicative checkpoint calls for cutting total annual GHG emissions by at least what percentage, relative to 2008?
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