Study on the Economic Impact of the International Maritime Organization Net Zero Framework

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Contract Opportunity

The purpose of this amendment no. 0002 is to provide Q&As to this RFP.

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The U.S. Maritime Administration is commissioning a targeted cost analysis of the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) “Net Zero Framework” (NZF), adopted in April 2025, that centers on the NZF’s specific policy mechanisms and their economic consequences for the United States. The study should examine, at minimum, the NZF’s:

(a) global GHG pricing/levy proposals (including scope, price trajectory, and pass-through mechanisms).

(b) emissions trading and crediting systems.

(c) use and role of carbon offsets and related crediting rules.

(d) fuel/energy standard or fuel blending mandates.

(e) technology mandates, exemptions, and phase in schedules.

(f) monitoring, reporting, and verification, auditing and compliance regimes.

(g) Fund governance, revenue collection, and allocation rules (including conditionality and funding flows to ports, projects, or countries); and

(h) enforcement, penalties, and potential border or trade adjustment measures.

MARAD is particularly interested in how each mechanism could:

(1) alter operating and capital costs for U.S. flagged and U.S. dependent shipping and logistics; (2) affect import/export unit costs (TEU/ton) and trade competitiveness.

(3) change demand for U.S. energy, technology, and maritime services.

(4) create administrative and compliance burdens; and

(5) risk leakage, double counting, or ineffective mitigation (for example, reliance on offsets that do not deliver measurable reductions).

The study should quantify impacts where feasible, identify key assumptions and uncertainties for each mechanism, and analyze distributional effects across U.S. industries, ports, and regions.

The contractor should compare outcomes under: (A) the NZF as proposed (mechanism by mechanism); (B) alternative designs that limit or reshape levy/offset components; and (C) delayed or phased implementation scenarios. For each mechanism, the study must recommend practical safeguards, alternative policy instruments, or design changes that would reduce unnecessary economic burdens on U.S. interests while maintaining emissions outcomes rooted in reality, and provide clear metrics and analytical methods that MARAD and U.S. negotiators can use to evaluate NZF proposals moving forward. For each mechanism, the study shall compare the proposed mechanism relative to a “No Action” approach to fully distinguish the costs and benefits to U.S. maritime, trade, and economic interests.

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Submission Dates and Times.

The deadline for proposal submission is 12:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Please submit proposals in PDF format via email to: Christian Onwudiegwu at Christian.onwudiegwu@dot.gov and Kelly Mitchell-Caroll at K.mitchell-carroll@dot.gov. Do not send paper copies, or other media of the proposal via post office or delivery service. Proposals received by MARAD after the deadline will not be considered for award. An email will be deemed “received” by MARAD on the date and time the email was “sent” to the email address in Section E.7, below, as determined by MARAD’s servers.

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