Nearly 200 shipping companies this week said they want the world’s largest maritime nations to adopt regulations that include the first-ever global fee on greenhouse gases to reduce their sector’s emissions.

The Getting to Zero Coalition, an alliance of companies, governments and intergovernmental organizations, is asking member states of the International Maritime Organization to support adopting regulations to transition to green shipping, including the fee, when they meet in London next month. The statement was shared exclusively with The Associated Press in advance.

The Trump administration unequivocally rejects the proposal before the IMO and has threatened to retaliate if nations support it, setting the stage for a fight over the climate deal. The United States considers the proposed regulatory framework “effectively a global carbon tax on Americans levied by an unaccountable U.N. organization,” the U.S. secretaries of State, Commerce, Energy and Transportation said in a joint statement last month.

U.S.-based shipping companies, however, have endorsed it. The Chamber of Shipping of America wants one global system, not multiple regional systems that could double charge vessels for their emissions depending on the route, said Kathy Metcalf, the chamber’s president emeritus.

The IMO, which regulates international shipping, set a target for the sector to reach net-zero greenhouse gas
emissions by about 2050, and has committed to ensuring that fuels with zero or near-zero emissions are used more widely.

In April, IMO member states agreed on the contents of a regulatory framework to impose a minimum fee for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by ships above certain thresholds and set a marine fuel standard to phase in cleaner fuels.

The IMO aims for consensus in decision-making but, in this case, had to vote. The U.S. was notably absent.

Now nations have to decide if the regulations will enter into force in 2027. If agreed upon, the regulations will become mandatory for large oceangoing ships of more than 5,000 gross tonnage, which emit 85 percent of the total carbon emissions from international shipping, according to the IMO.

If nations don’t agree, shipping’s decarbonization will be further delayed and “the chance of the sector playing a proper and fair part in the fight to keep global heating below dangerous levels will almost certainly be lost,” said Delaine McCullough, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition and Ocean Conservancy shipping director.

Shipping companies want the regulations because it gives them the certainty needed to make investments in cleaner technologies, such as fuels that are alternatives to fossil fuels and the ships that run on them.