IMO Net-Zero Framework: what it is and where it stands

The IMO Net-Zero Framework is the measure that would put a global price on ship greenhouse gas emissions and a global standard on the fuels that cause them. It is also, as of today, not law. It was approved at MEPC 83 in April 2025 and submitted for adoption; the extraordinary session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee that met on 14 to 17 October 2025 to adopt it agreed instead to adjourn for twelve months IMO extraordinary MEPC session ↗. No ship owes anything under it, and the design is still being negotiated.

That gap — between how finished the framework sounds and how unfinished it is — is the thing worth getting right. This page covers what the framework would do, why no numbers from it appear here, and the specific dates on which its fate is decided.

What the framework would do

The Net-Zero Framework takes the form of amendments to Annex VI of MARPOL, the same annex that already carries the carbon intensity indicator and the fuel oil consumption data collection system IMO Net-Zero Framework ↗. It would apply to oceangoing ships above 5,000 gross tonnage — the same threshold CII uses — which the IMO puts at over 85 % of emissions from international shipping.

Its measure of a ship is GHG fuel intensity: greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy used on board, expressed in grams of CO₂ equivalent per megajoule, and counted well-to-wake, so the emissions of producing and delivering a fuel count alongside those of burning it. Anyone who has worked through FuelEU Maritime will recognise the shape of that number immediately — the well-to-wake pillar covers the same accounting under a regional instrument that is in force.

Compliance would work in two tiers rather than one. A ship doing better than its target generates surplus units, which can be banked or transferred to another ship. A ship falling short closes the gap by acquiring those surplus units or by buying remedial units, and the money from remedial units flows into an IMO Net-Zero Fund that would reward low-emission ships and support developing states.

Why this page prints no numbers

A reader who has seen a presentation on the framework has seen a reduction trajectory and two remedial-unit prices. None of them appear here, and that is deliberate.

MEPC 84 did not just postpone a decision; it opened the text. The Committee established an intersessional working group and invited Member States to submit new amendments and adjustments to the previously approved draft IMO MEPC 84 ↗. A trajectory and a price that Member States are actively re-drafting are not coefficients — they are positions.

The rest of this site prints a coefficient only where it comes from an instrument in force, carries a valid-from date and a source document, and is recomputed against the calculation engine every time the site is built. No figure in this framework can meet that test, because there is no instrument in force to cite it to. Publishing the April 2025 numbers as settled would mean the one thing this hub exists to avoid.

Where it actually stands

The sequence matters more than any single date, because each step has moved at least once.

MEPC 83 approved the draft amendments in April 2025. The extraordinary session convened that October to adopt them and adjourned for twelve months instead IMO extraordinary MEPC session ↗. MEPC 84, held from 27 April to 1 May 2026, kept the framework as the basis for negotiation, established the intersessional working group, and set the calendar that now governs everything: working group meetings on 1 to 4 September and 23 to 27 November 2026, MEPC 85 from 30 November to 3 December 2026, and the adjourned extraordinary session resuming on 4 December 2026 — that last subject to confirmation by MEPC 85 itself IMO MEPC 84 ↗.

So the decision window is the first week of December 2026. If the amendments are adopted there, the IMO expects entry into force sixteen months later IMO Net-Zero Framework ↗; the exact date is fixed at adoption, which means that until adoption happens there is an interval to plan against but no date. If they are not adopted, the calendar resets again.

What this means alongside what you already comply with

Nothing to file, nothing to pay, and no fuel decision that the framework alone justifies. What is worth doing is narrower and more useful.

The well-to-wake accounting is transferable. A company already computing energy-weighted GHG intensity for FuelEU Maritime is doing the work the global fuel standard would ask for, on a different boundary and a different scope — that capability is not speculative and is not wasted whichever way December goes. The same is not true of procurement decisions justified by a carbon price that has not been adopted: a fuel contract underwritten by the April 2025 numbers is underwritten by a draft.

And keep the regimes separate in the systems, not only in the briefing note. EU ETS and FuelEU are in force now and regional; CII is in force now and global; the Net-Zero Framework is global and not in force. A compliance calendar that files them under one heading will eventually act on the wrong one.

Last reviewed 18 September 2026 · Carbonlogy Compliance Team