The panel on the role of international regulation at SIBCON 2026. Image Credit: Ship & Bunker

If the IMO fails again in December to agree a global emissions reduction framework, the biggest risk to shipping is a patchwork of regional carbon rules that double-count emissions and tax trade without funding the transition, the panel on the role of international regulation at SIBCON 2026 in Singapore heard on Thursday.

Adoption of the Net-Zero Framework as it stands is unlikely this year, delegates were told, because member states still hold major red lines.

The realistic hope for December is a clear direction on which proposals and which economic and technical elements the IMO will take forward.

Any deal needs three things, the panel heard: a clear emissions reduction target, an economic signal that brings investors and fuel producers in, and acceptance across the wider IMO membership.

Early implementation around 2029 is now seen as unlikely.

Certainty is what investors need most, because capital for infrastructure or dual-fuel ships is committed for 20 to 30 years, and the regulator's job is to provide predictable pathways that reward emission reduction.

Owners and charterers want the IMO to lead, delegates heard, and if regional rules come anyway, the IMO and port state control should coordinate how they are implemented, verified, reported, and enforced.

Whatever happens in December, energy efficiency and credible measurement are the "no-regret" moves, the panel heard.

Efficiency cuts a ship's fuel consumption, and with it the volume of expensive alternative fuel it will need, while independently verified savings data gives an owner and a charterer an agreed basis for sharing the benefit of an efficiency investment.

The split between owners who pay for efficiency and charterers who pay for fuel is still unresolved, and an owner installing a device or a new fuel system has no clear answer on payback through charter rates.

The 2050 ambition itself is not in dispute, delegates were told, and even the framework's opponents say they want net zero by around 2050. The argument is only about how to get there.

The panel was moderated by Adrian Tolson, chair of IBIA and owner of 2050 Marine Energy, with Capt. Raymond Peter, managing director, Singapore, at Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, Sarah Greenough, head of maritime enterprise at BHP, Dr Shahrin Osman, business development director, maritime advisory, at DNV, and Sunil Krishnakumar, general manager, Singapore, at the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS).

Below are other key takeaways from the session that was held under the Chatham House rule, so what follows is reported without attributing any point to an individual speaker.

Where the Talks Stand

• The session opened on four scenarios from DNV's Maritime Forecast: a deal with the EU stepping back, seen as least likely; delay and a rewrite; the IMO failing while the EU tightens, with a global deal only years later; and complete failure, leaving the EU as the only regulation. The panel's expectation sat between the second and the third scenarios.
• The framework's key opponents were the US administration, which called it a global carbon tax, fossil fuel exporting states, and those with genuine fuel availability concerns, which crystallised in the Liberia, Argentina, and Panama proposal.
• New papers are still flowing into the intersessional working group and the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) daily, and compromise talks are running in the background.
• Technical work goes on regardless: more than 10 guidelines sit under the framework, and the lifecycle expert group is analysing more than 125 fuel production pathways to set emission factors.
• That data-based work is also the answer to what were called "emotional arguments" over first-generation biofuels.

If the IMO Fails

• Regional schemes are already being contemplated in markets such as Djibouti and Gabon, and the UK is consulting on extending its scheme to international voyages.
• Shipping is not homogeneous, and only a global rule can allow for liners, tramp operators, and other different ship types on different schedules; regional rules cannot do that quickly, and if their revenue does not flow back to the industry they are simply a tax on trade.
• Money spent on regional levies is money not invested in new technology, and the cost will be passed down the supply chain.
• For a charterer trading the Americas, Europe, and Asia, overlapping regulation would be costly and hard to navigate; the answer comes down to how flexible your decarbonisation strategy is and how much optionality you build into it.
• Ship managers running mixed fleets for many owners across many jurisdictions are bombarded with fast-changing requirements, and the concern is less a lack of regulation than the ability to implement it consistently across the whole supply chain.

Efficiency and Measurement

• Energy efficiency pays under any outcome: DNV's Maritime Forecast to 2050 puts the potential fuel saving from a hydrodynamic retrofit on a 5,000 TEU container ship at up to 16% a year, and has the global fleet using up to 25% less energy by 2050 under strong global regulation than under a regionally driven patchwork, which shrinks the volume of expensive alternative fuel needed.
• Owners of tankers and bulkers often do not pay for the fuel, and charter periods are shorter than a ship's life, which is what makes efficiency investment hard to justify.
• Monitoring, reporting, and verification give both sides an independently verified saving to split, and GCMD's Fund for Energy Efficiency Technologies, with BHP and DNV among its founding partners, is one framework for scaling that investment.
• It is "not impossible" for charterers to pay for an owner's efficiency measures where partners are aligned and the commercial arrangement lets both sides win. There are cases where such owner-charterer arrangements are already in place.
• The industry's own data collection shows emissions below 2008 levels, but self-regulation has limits, and because what owners can do on their own varies between container ships, bulkers, and tankers on their different trades, it comes back to having a "proper framework".

Fleet and People

• About 6,000 ships will come online in the next seven to eight years and most will still be trading in 2050, with about a third of them dual-fuel or dual-fuel-ready, so a large conventional fleet with energy-saving devices is the reality.
• More than 800,000 seafarers will need training by the mid-2030s if all the new fuels are used, and the crews managing safety on board day to day should not be forgotten.
• Asked whether net zero by 2050 is a date or a direction, the answer was that no single thing decides it: fuel availability, retrofit slots, trained crews, and a regulatory signal with an economic element all have to move together.
• A combination of fuels and energy-saving devices rather than a silver bullet, and adaptability when the rules change, is how owners and managers plan to reach 2050.