Despite significant global economic and geopolitical headwinds, the maritime industry’s unwavering commitment to decarbonization remains remarkably resilient.
Net Zero Targets
A recent industry survey reveals a mixed but generally progressive picture regarding maritime decarbonization efforts, highlighting both increased adoption of certain green practices and persistent challenges, particularly concerning policy and infrastructure.
Key Findings on Decarbonization Targets and Technologies:
- Net-Zero Targets: A growing majority of respondents, 60%, have now set net-zero targets, an increase from 54% previously.
- Bio-blended Fuels: The use of bio-blended fuels has seen a substantial surge, more than doubling to 46% adoption.
- Methanol Use: While still a smaller percentage, methanol use has increased from 3% to 6%.
- Nascent Technologies: Despite progress in some areas, the uptake of more nascent technologies remains limited. These include ammonia, wind-assisted propulsion systems, solar panels, super-light ships, and air lubrication.
Industry’s Call for Policy and Regulatory Support: The survey strongly reflects the industry’s desire for a level playing field to be created through policies and regulations.
- Nearly three-quarters of respondents identified either compliance measures or financial incentives as the most important policy objectives.
- A level playing field is seen as crucial to prevent early adopters from being competitively disadvantaged on cost and to ensure that stakeholders with limited resources can access financial support to overcome economic barriers.
Key Initiatives
The report identifies four pivotal initiatives essential for the maritime sector to achieve its ambitious decarbonization goals:
- Leveling the Regulatory Playing Field: Regulators play a crucial role in ensuring that all stakeholders can adopt decarbonization solutions without facing competitive disadvantages. Current challenges highlighted by respondents include:
- Regulatory methodologies do not account for the myriad of conditions vessels operate under (52% of respondents).
- Lack of clear guidelines within existing regulations (44%).
- Non-uniform standards in regional policies and regulations (39%). A harmonized and comprehensive regulatory framework is seen as fundamental to enable widespread adoption.
- Fostering Economic Viability of Decarbonization Solutions: Addressing the higher costs associated with adopting green solutions is equally important. The report suggests that this may necessitate blended financing models, which could involve financial incentives from governments and innovative private sector financing mechanisms like “pay-as-you-save” schemes. A significant finding is that more than 70% of respondents reported that the availability of financial incentives has remained largely unchanged since 2022, indicating a pressing need for increased financial support.
- Creating Demand Certainty for Infrastructure Investment: To spur critical infrastructure investment, there’s a need to generate clear demand signals. This can be achieved by aggregating low-carbon fuel demand across multiple shipping companies. By collaborating with ports, shipping companies can better guarantee demand through measures such as sharing demand forecasts or offering demand guarantees. This would provide ports with a more reliable customer base, thereby catalyzing necessary investments in supporting infrastructure. However, the report cautions that such collaborative mechanisms must be structured in compliance with relevant antitrust laws to avoid inadvertently restricting competition.
- Bridging Awareness and Knowledge Gaps: Finally, addressing the existing awareness and knowledge gaps is crucial for accelerating decarbonization. The report advocates for:
- Creating a data-sharing environment that balances security with mutual benefits. This would allow companies to share performance data while retaining control, in exchange for advanced insights. Such platforms could aggregate data and package it into ‘sister ship’ benchmarks to reduce uncertainty and accelerate the adoption of decarbonization solutions, especially the less widely adopted ones.
- Internally, companies should allocate resources to build internal capabilities, including dedicated sustainability teams.
- Partnering with industry bodies such as classification societies, regulatory authorities, and think tanks can also help disseminate knowledge and best practices.
These four initiatives collectively aim to create a more supportive ecosystem that encourages widespread adoption of decarbonization technologies and practices across the maritime sector.
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Source: Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization
