Shipping. You probably don’t realise how much this industry affects your day to day lives. UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shared in 2025 that maritime transport moved over 80% of goods traded worldwide by volume. The UK government shared in 2025 all UK ports handled a total of 428.3 million tonnes (of goods, shipping is measured in volume or tonnage). That means the everyday goods we use have most likely arrived thanks to shipping.
Yet, did you know that shipping remains a dirty industry? We welcomed Joojin Kim, CEO of Solutions For Our Climate, to Climate Curious to explain how shipping can and must do better for the environment. Here are five facts from the expert to quickly get you up to speed with why shipping needs to clean up its act, fast.
#1 Shipping is a huge greenhouse emitter
If shipping was a country it would be the world’s sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter. In his Climate Curious episode, How to make shipping part of the climate solution, Joojin Kim explains why shipping creates so many greenhouse gas emissions.
“There’s a lot of emissions issues to it… Fossil fuels can go inside. It could be the fuels that they run on. All of the steel is also made of coal, basically the outside of the ship. It’s a big concentration of fossil fuels there.”
As well as burning dirty fossil fuels to run the ships themselves, shipping is responsible for moving fossil fuels (oil, liquified natural gas) all around the world. Joojin points out that “one third of the maritime trade is fossil fuels – crude oil, gas – it’s that big.” Plus the steel used to create these ships is coal-based steel which is creating even more emissions.
#2 Shipping causes damaging pollution for local communities and wildlife
One part of the story Joojin doesn’t touch on in his Climate Curious episode is how damaging the pollution from shipping is for communities and wildlife all over the world. However, the research by the organisation he leads, Solutions For Our Climate, explains very clearly the environmental impacts of shipping. In a recent blog, they share some common consequences of shopping:
– All large vessels cause underwater noise: “These far-travelling, low-frequency sounds often disrupt communication, navigation and even feeding and migration patterns among fish and marine mammals like whales and dolphins… At least 150 marine species around the world have been found to have been affected by underwater noise.”
– Many large vessels use ballast water (seawater pumped onboard to maintain stability) and when released can introduce invasive species to new regions. “When this discharged water is left untreated, these species are introduced and often become invasive to the local ecosystem.”
– Local communities near shipping ports suffer from the impacts of shipping, including poor air quality, poor water quality and depleted fish stocks for local fishermen. For instance, increased ship numbers, especially those carrying liquified natural gas, ‘impacts residents’ health, notably increasing cardiovascular and respiratory disease risks originating from the release of harmful air pollutants like nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter.’
These are just a few examples of the impacts of shipping outside of its greenhouse gas emissions. So how do we start going about tackling these? Well firstly, Joojin shows it’s important to understand how the industry is currently working.
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#3 East Asia produces the lion’s share of the world’s ships
90% of ships across the world are made in East Asia – China, South Korea, Japan. With East Asia being the world’s leading producer of steel, plus production expertise, local factories and skilled workers, as well as financial support from governments, it’s easy to see how the territory has cornered the market by ensuring output and quality is kept high.
“East Asia, China, Japan, Korea, all have very big manufacturing facilities, including steel. A lot of steel mills. Steel goes into cars. [It] also goes into ships. Because of that many shipyards are out there. Korea has a lot of big shipyards. China has more shipyards. Where I come from, South Korea, we build a lot of more expensive ships – and the most expensive of the ships are fossil fuel related ships.”
Why is the location of where ships are made matter? Well, apart from these ships using primarily coal-based steel to be built that adds to greenhouse emissions and impacts local communities, understanding the industry is integral for Joojin and his colleagues to better understand how to clean up this industry. Joojin’s background is in taking on coal financing in South Korea. After success in this endeavour, he discovered that a lot of this coal financing was then going into shipping.
#4 Shipping is a beneficiary of fossil fuel financing
Being solutions focussed means pinning down the problem. Which in turn often means “following the money”. This is exactly what Joojin and his team did. But instead of stopping there. They took it one step further. To stop the money!
“We were trying to understand where banks, especially government banks, were providing money in not just coal assets, but also gas and oil assets. And one surprising fact we realised while we were about to end the coal financing, is that a lot of government goes into ships.
Before that, I really didn’t know that our shipbuilding industry would be such a big beneficiary of fossil [fuel] financing…. This is like more than $10 billion per year of government money and government guarantees loans going out to fossil fuel ships.”
As Joojin and their colleagues better understood the industry – where and how these ships were being made and how they were being financed – it helped them pinpoint where they might intervene and how.
#5 How disrupting finance flows and increasing awareness will help shipping get greener
Joojin and Solutions For Our Climate were recently awarded a grant from Audacious Project. Housed at TED, The Audacious Project is a funding initiative that encourages the world’s greatest changemakers to dream bigger. Joojin and Solutions For Our Climate explain that their approach is to tackle shipping and the maritime industry specifically in East Asia, disrupting the traditional finance flows, working to change policy and mobilising public pressure.
Joojin explains in his Climate Curious episode why he thinks this approach will work.
“I think common sense works. I think if people realise, see and understand where emissions come from, how it comes from. Nobody really says, ‘Oh, that’s good’. Most people, when they understand it, they feel resentment.”
Raising awareness and understanding about shipping to the general public is very important, but Joojin also thinks a part of this approach is to make sure the right people are influenced.
“[People] really don’t understand how important these things are in the overall fossil fuel supply chain. You gotta let them know… and more specifically, you gotta let people know who are behind these, who are the economics, who are the companies, the banks, the insurers behind these things. That’s the people [who need to] know.”
Joojin and Solutions For Our Climate are planning to cut up to a huge 2.2 billion metric tonnes of carbon annually by 2032 and drive global decarbonisation across shipping. We hope this multi-pronged approach works!
At Climate Curious, we aim to play our part in raising awareness – like Joojin and his colleagues – on the topic of shipping and any other industry that needs to rapidly go green to protect our planet and people. This is our first episode and deep dive into shipping and going forward we’ll be sure to keep listeners updated with work of folks like Joojin to make shipping cleaner and greener.
