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If global shipping was a country, it would be the world’s sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter. But help is on its way. Joojin Kim tells Climate Curious we can sink shipping’s dirty old habits by following the money. “It’s common sense. The alternatives are all there. It’s just the policy, regulations and finance,” he tells TEDxLondon’s Deesha Chandra at TED2026. Hear how the CEO of Solutions for Our Climate and a grantee of The Audacious Project got his start in climate action – taking on coal financing in South Korea –and how that fight led him to shipping, one of the world’s dirtiest industries, and one that happens to sit right in his backyard.
Learn more about Solutions For Our Climate: https://forourclimate.org/
Check out this year’s The Audacious Project grantees: https://www.audaciousproject.org/news/building-what-lasts-welcoming-the-audacious-projects-newest-cohort
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Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Shipping’s Hidden Footprint
01:00 Ports and Fossil Fuel Hubs
02:07 How Big Are Shipping Emissions
03:28 East Asia Builds the Fleet
05:17 Making Shipping Greener
06:10 Winning Against Coal Finance
07:35 Following the Money to Ships
09:01 Lessons and Hope for Change
10:36 Audacious Project Support
11:13 Closing and Credits
Shipping’s Hidden Footprint
[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Curious Quickies, bite-sized nuggets of Climate Goodness from our TEDx experts in under 10 minutes.
[00:00:09] Ben Hurst: If global shipping was a country, it would be the world’s sick, largest [00:00:15] greenhouse gas emitter. But today’s guest thinks that we can turn that around, and he’s done it before. Joojin Kim is a legal expert who’s built his career taken on coal financing in South Korea, and now he’s turned [00:00:30] his attention to shipping one of the world’s dirtiest industries and one that happens to sit right in his backyard.
[00:00:38] Ben Hurst: Juin is the CEO of solutions for our climate and an audacious project grantee. He sat down with [00:00:45] TEDxLondon’s Deesha Chandra at TED 2026 to talk about how we clean up global shipping and why to him it’s simple but not easy. Stay curious.[00:01:00]
Ports and Fossil Fuel Hubs
[00:01:00] Deesha Chandra: So we are here with, Joojin Kim today, the CEO of Solutions For Our Climate. Yes, thank you so much for joining us and it was really great to hear TED talk today. I’d love to maybe just kick off by you bringing the shipping industry into, [00:01:15] everyday life for us, maybe by using an item or object.
[00:01:19] Joojin Kim: Well, people don’t usually go to sea ports, right. they don’t know what’s happening. But usually here in Vancouver where we are, just up the [00:01:30] river, there’s a coal terminal, there’s a, terminal where they offload oil and unload oil. And then right in front of my hotel room. There’s a big port offloading and unloading containers, and then there’s gonna be a [00:01:45] gas station for those ships at the port.
[00:01:46] Joojin Kim: That’s what it is. And actually, as much as the ships are big, there’s a lot of emissions issue to it. I mean, it could go inside the cargo tax. Fossil fuels can go inside. It could be the fuels that they run on. All of the steel is [00:02:00] also like made of coal, basically, you know, outside the ship. So. It’s, a big concentration of fossil fuels there.
[00:02:07] Joojin Kim: Yeah. Yeah.
How Big Are Shipping Emissions
[00:02:07] Deesha Chandra: Your talk is a lot about the, the global shipping industry Yeah. And it not being a side issue.
[00:02:12] Joojin Kim: Yeah.
[00:02:13] Deesha Chandra: and quite a major issue. [00:02:15] How big are the emissions associated with the global shipping industry?
[00:02:18] Joojin Kim: one third of the cargo traded maritime trade is. Fossil fuels, it’s crude oil, gas, [00:02:30] it’s that big.
[00:02:31] Joojin Kim: So the moment we, I mean a joke is that a moment we stop trading oil or gas, we become an ideal world where no fossil fuels are needed.
[00:02:40] Joojin Kim: Then one third of the shipping industry will have nothing. I mean, we’ll lose [00:02:45] cargo. Of course they can be different cargoes, but that it’s that big. Right.
[00:02:47] Joojin Kim: That’s what I wanna say. it’s that big. And, another fact is that, Gas travels through pipelines, natural gas.
[00:02:58] Joojin Kim: But around half [00:03:00] travels on ships and that’s a big, I mean, from that, just that fossil fuel carbon footprint from that trading of gas. Is really big. It’s gonna be, I think five, you [00:03:15] know, some percent of just the overall global emissions trading on these several hundreds of boats.
[00:03:22] Joojin Kim: Yeah. It, is a very concentrated moving channel of fossil fuels.
East Asia Builds the Fleet
[00:03:28] Deesha Chandra: Something really interesting in your talk was [00:03:30] the fact that 90% of world ships are built in East Asia. Right. Can you talk a little bit more about
[00:03:34] Joojin Kim: that? Well, yeah. I mean East Asia, China, Japan, Korea, all. Have very big man manufacturing facilities, [00:03:45] including steel.
[00:03:46] Joojin Kim: A lot of steel mills and, one of the, I mean, steel goes into cars. They also go into ships.
[00:03:51] Joojin Kim: Because of that. Many shipyards are out there. Korea has a lot of big shipyards. China has more shipyards. [00:04:00] where I come from, South Korea, we build a lot of, let’s say more expensive ships. And the most, one of the most, one of, one of the quite expensive of the ships are, fossil fuel related ships.
[00:04:10] Deesha Chandra: Right?
[00:04:11] Joojin Kim: Those which carry fossil fuels. I mean, carriers with [00:04:15] the big tankers that freeze, I mean basically liquefy, LNG and, you know, carry them in a, liquified form. You have to have, be up below 150 degrees Celsius temperatures there, and then drill ships.
[00:04:28] Joojin Kim: You know, ships that go [00:04:30] to do offshore drilling and, you know, do offshore, you know, oil.
[00:04:33] Joojin Kim: Oil or gas processing. Those ships are also a lot, built a lot
[00:04:38] Joojin Kim: In our shipyard. So I kind of going, I often go to these shipyards and every time I see, you know, the, the [00:04:45] tankers or the drill ships out there, this. Is a big concentration of the global fossil fuel industry.
[00:04:52] Deesha Chandra: Yeah.
[00:04:53] Joojin Kim: In, in our industrial facilities in South Korea.
[00:04:55] Joojin Kim: I mean, Japan, China are not countries which extract a lot of these [00:05:00] things, but the role these countries play in the overall supply chain
[00:05:05] Joojin Kim: Of fossil fuels is. Pig.
[00:05:08] Deesha Chandra: Yeah. I guess the sh ships are made from these, unsustainable materials. They ship the fossil fuels and emit,
[00:05:14] Joojin Kim: and then they’re [00:05:15] propelled by, you know, gas or oil.
[00:05:16] Deesha Chandra: Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:16] Yeah.
Making Shipping Greener
[00:05:17] Deesha Chandra: And so it’s a really great, like, opportunity for impact here. Can you talk a little bit about how you’re making this industry more green?
[00:05:23] Joojin Kim: First thing is like. Just like you, not a lot of people, I mean, people usually don’t port, don’t see Portsmouth, people who [00:05:30] live near there.
[00:05:30] Deesha Chandra: Yeah.
[00:05:31] Joojin Kim: Really don’t understand how important, these things facilities are in the overall fossil fuel supply chain.
[00:05:38] Joojin Kim: You gotta let them know.
[00:05:39] Joojin Kim: You gotta let them know that, oh, okay. Shipping just fuels is. You know, the, the propulsion field is the sixth largest [00:05:45] greenhouse gas metre in the world that around half of the world’s natural gas is transported on tankers. That, and then those things, you gotta let them know.
[00:05:55] Joojin Kim: I mean, that is the most important thing. And more specifically, you gotta let people [00:06:00] know who are behind these, who are the economic, who are the companies, the banks, the insurers behind these things. That’s what has the people that know. Yeah.
[00:06:08] Deesha Chandra: A lot of people won’t know that.
Winning Against Coal Finance
[00:06:10] Deesha Chandra: before you started on shipping, you also took on, the coal industry, coal in South Korea and helped end coal power Yes.
[00:06:17] Deesha Chandra: financing in South Korea. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit more
[00:06:20] about
[00:06:20] Joojin Kim: that? Yeah. when I began, my work, with the organisation if I went to the internet and wrote down coal power
[00:06:29] Joojin Kim: All good news. [00:06:30] Oh, we secured a new coal power plant somewhere. This is going to be built all very positive and good news.
[00:06:35] Joojin Kim: We started to share that, oh, this is air pollution. This is premature deaths climate change.
[00:06:42] Joojin Kim: We should stop operating them in the country. We should [00:06:45] stop exporting these. ’cause you know, back then. Korean or Japanese and Chinese companies were building coal power plants abroad in Southeast Asia, you know, all kinds of developing nations.
[00:06:55] Joojin Kim: and, and the power of that, why that was possible is our government was supporting [00:07:00] financially these, these projects a lot.
[00:07:02] Joojin Kim: So we work strongly to make this new spread through the press, through the public, through our politicians, and eventually. it was a fact, it was a climate fact that [00:07:15] people couldn’t deny that, oh, this is not good.
[00:07:16] Joojin Kim: This is not sustainable. Yeah. The youth movement also came up, so eventually the Korean government and then the Japanese government, and then the Chinese government decided, okay, no longer coal experts, no longer coal expert financing. That’s what [00:07:30] happened. Right. It was, 25 years ago. Oh, wow. Almost five years ago.
[00:07:33] Joojin Kim: Yeah.
[00:07:34] Deesha Chandra: Nice. Yeah.
Following the Money to Ships
[00:07:35] Deesha Chandra: And, how did that, how did you move to shipping from then?
[00:07:37] Joojin Kim: We were trying to understand. where banks, especially government banks, were providing money. [00:07:45]
[00:07:45] Joojin Kim: In, in, in not just coal assets, but also gas and oil assets. And one surprising fact we realised while we were kind of about to end coal financing, is that a lot of the, a lot of government go, money [00:08:00] goes into ships.
[00:08:02] Joojin Kim: Before that, I really didn’t know that our shipbuilding industry would be such a big beneficiary of fossil financing. It was?
[00:08:11] Joojin Kim: Yeah. The figures, the numbers. This is like [00:08:15] more than $10 billion per year of government money. Government guarantees loans going out to fossil fuel ships. I mean, mean carry ships that carry fossil fuels several hundred, especially after the war in Ukraine.
[00:08:28] Joojin Kim: and the surge of LNG, I mean, [00:08:30] liquified natural gas in, Europe, the ship orders came to places like Korea and, you know, in Europe they would’ve been building LNG import terminals.
[00:08:39] Joojin Kim: In Korea, we were building ships that would go, that would serve as basically the buses between a [00:08:45] gas field in the Middle East and Europe or, Gasfield in Texas or Louisiana.
[00:08:50] Joojin Kim: And in Europe, that’s what. Our shipyards were busy for the past couple of years. I mean so busy that they were not able to accept, probably they were not able to accept renewable related ship [00:09:00] orders as well, you know?
[00:09:00] Deesha Chandra: Right.
[00:09:01] Joojin Kim: Yeah.
Lessons and Hope for Change
[00:09:01] Deesha Chandra: In terms of like the lessons that you’re learning from your time in working in coal with coal
[00:09:06] Deesha Chandra: Or the coal industry, is there something that you’re taking into the work that you’re doing in shipping?
[00:09:11] Joojin Kim: I think, common sense works.
[00:09:14] Joojin Kim: I think, [00:09:15] if people realise, see and understand. Where emissions come from, how it comes from. Nobody really says, oh, that’s good. I mean, some pipe, some people say that’s good, some people, very small.
[00:09:29] Joojin Kim: Number [00:09:30] of people.
[00:09:30] Deesha Chandra: Yeah.
[00:09:31] Joojin Kim: But, some, especially small number of people who don’t want to change. We have some lifeline in the fossil fuel industry, but. Most people, when they understand it, they feel, resentment. Oh, this is weird.
[00:09:43] Joojin Kim: This is wrong. And then, [00:09:45] no, we gotta stop it.
[00:09:46] Deesha Chandra: Yeah.
[00:09:46] Joojin Kim: Many levels of different change.
[00:09:47] Joojin Kim: But I think, I mean the more and more people, will understand where emissions come from, the economics behind it, the money flow behind it.
[00:09:56] Deesha Chandra: We
[00:09:56] Joojin Kim: will solve this problem.
[00:09:57] Deesha Chandra: And is there something that you might pass on to [00:10:00] others that are trying to do this
[00:10:01] Joojin Kim: Well, we will solve this problem. I think, you know, humanity when COVID happened, I mean.
[00:10:08] Joojin Kim: we took extreme measures to, you know, save the world. COVID was a simpler problem, I think compared to climate [00:10:15] change. It was a virus and then the effects of it, climate change comes in such, so many forms. It’s more complicated and the economy around it is so big. But once we connect the dots, we will solve the problem.
[00:10:27] Joojin Kim: and all of our efforts to [00:10:30] be aware and try to pinpoint that’s not right is, gonna be very meaningful. Yeah. And
Audacious Project Support
[00:10:36] Deesha Chandra: so you’re also an Audacious grantee. Yeah. Can you tell us how that’s going to impact the work that you’re going to do?
[00:10:42] Joojin Kim: Well, because of the generous support that we received through [00:10:45] the Audacious project, we will be able to, you know, more effectively, more ambitiously be able to tackle these challenges because this is a lot of money.
[00:10:55] Joojin Kim: I mean the, the issues that we are trying to tackle have a lot of economics interest [00:11:00] behind it, and the more we have resources, the more we have, you know, people who can work on the issue, we will reduce emissions that much. So, yeah. I’m so grateful that, we were able to, get this, opportunity.
Closing and Credits
[00:11:13] Ben Hurst: Thanks for listening to this quickie. [00:11:15]
[00:11:15] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDxLondon. Until next time,
[00:11:20] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
