Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their Embracing the ocean: a Board of Trade paper, published on 10 March 2022, how they arrived at their assessment that maritime cargo volumes will treble by 2050; and what assessment they have made of how this will affect their international obligations to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and meet the biodiversity targets agreed at COP 15 in Montreal in December 2022.

The assessment made in the Board of Trade’s ‘Embracing the Ocean’ paper that maritime cargo volumes will treble by 2050 is drawn from the International Transport Forum (ITF) Discussion Paper, No. 2020/05 ‘Changing Demand for Maritime Trade’ (P. Cariou). That paper cites data from the ITF’s Transport Outlook (2019), which investigates how socio-economic changes (population, GDP trade and transport policies) affect global transport demand, including for maritime.

The Government uses UK-level evidence rather than global-level evidence when analysing how UK shipping could contribute to meeting the UK’s economy-wide net-zero target. DfT has produced forecasts of the freight traffic at UK ports, which cover the period to 2050, which have been published online. The UK port freight traffic forecasts were taken into account in the research commissioned by DfT which informed the Net Zero Strategy pathways for UK domestic and international shipping. Further details on the Net Zero Strategy pathways for UK domestic and international shipping can be found on pages 342 and 343 of the Net Zero strategy itself.