IBIA CONVENTION 2025: Will There Be Enough Alternative Fuels?

Jason Stefanatos, global decarbonisation director at DNV, gave a presentation at the convention last week. Image Credit: Ship & Bunker

A key question hanging over the shipping industry is whether enough alternative fuels can be made available to meet its decarbonisation goals over the shorter term.

Biofuels have proven a popular means of decarbonisation in the short run, but concerns remain over the scalability of their supply. And investments in the supply of other alternative fuels have been thrown into doubt by last month's delay at the IMO and wider issues over their high cost.

At last week's IBIA Annual Convention in Hong Kong, delegates heard questions over whether enough alternative fuels will emerge over the remainder of this decade to meet short-term decarbonisation goals.

"By 2030 the global fleet will have the theoretical capacity to burn almost 50 million tonnes of alternatives," Jason Stefanatos, global decarbonisation director at DNV, said in a presentation at the convention on Wednesday.

"The question is, will the shipowners find that fuel to burn?

"Based on what the net-zero framework says today, the global fleet would need 30-60% of global green fuels production if they wanted to avoid paying [penalties].

"Today shipping is burning 3-4% of the global energy mix, so going to 30-60% would be challenging."

If that challenge cannot be met, the industry risks seeing a lot of expensive ships capable of running on alternative fuels using conventional bunkers instead. Some three quarters of the orderbook for container ships above 2,000 TEU in size have dual-fuel capability, according to the presentation.

"There is no golden solution; if there were a golden solution, we would not have this discussion now," Stefanatos said.

"All the solutions that are green in the last column, they are yellow to red in the other columns."