(www.MaritimeCyprus.com) It is estimated that about 5-10% of all the fuels used by the shipping industry in 2030 need to be scalable zero-emissions fuels (SZEF) for the industry to be on track to meet the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) 2023 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction ambitions.
This tipping point was coined “shipping’s 2030 breakthrough”. Reaching this target equates to having 0.6-1.2 exa-joules (EJ) of energy coming from SZEF (approximately 15-30 million metric tonnes (Mt) per year of HFOe1 or around 600-1200 of some of the larger containerships running on SZEF). This report tracks progress across the five levers of technology and supply, demand, finance, policy, and civil society to establish whether the industry is on track towards this goal.
Since the first edition of this report in 2022, several key conditions were set for fuels to comply as SZEF. These include the need for the fuels to be:
- scalable, such that 200-300 Mt of HFOe of current annual consumption can be matched in the foreseeable future;
- producible with GHG intensity reductions of 90-100% relative to incumbent fossil-based fuels on a full life cycle (well-to-wake) basis; and
- competitive in cost of production in the foreseeable future, assuming continued research and development and the adoption of viable policy support mechanisms.
This therefore excludes biofuels, less-polluting fossil fuels (including liquified natural gas), blue fuels, and some e-fuels (e-methane is not included because it has a higher cost to achieve equivalent well-to-wake emissions performance, given methane’s potency as a GHG). The report recognises that significant information regarding scalability, emissions intensity, and costs is still emerging, and, hence, these definitions will be reviewed and updated if required, to reflect new evidence in future editions.
This year’s assessment indicates some progress in moving towards the 2030 goal. Still, changes seen across the five levers taken together suggest that there is a significant risk that the transition breakthrough point of 2030 may now be delayed. Technology to support SZEF has progressed well, as have developments related to their supply and availability. However, the demand needed for the uptake of those fuels and the financial progress required to make them viable have stalled.
This is despite the IMO agreeing on a Net Zero Framework (NZF) in April 2025, including defining some regulations it intends to use to achieve its 2023 GHG Strategy’s ambitions. Critical pieces of the regulations, especially regarding the incentives the IMO intends to use to drive the transition, are still to be defined. As these details are central to allowing the entire value chain to develop and execute on pathways towards the IMO’s ambitions, the coming months of negotiations to settle the details—and allow for the industry to understand and react to their implications—will determine whether there remains a plausible path towards the 2030 breakthrough.
For more information, you can download the full Report below:
Source: UCL Energy Institute, Getting to Zero Coalition, and Climate High-Level Champions.
