Johnny Kackur, head of coastal merchant at Wärtsilä. Image Credit: Wärtsilä

The EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) carbon price averaged around €78 per tonne of CO₂ in 2024.

On current trajectories, that figure is expected to climb past €100 by 2030. For a 50,000 DWT tanker running on heavy fuel oil trading European routes, the European carbon market alone could add more than €2 million a year to operating costs by the end of the decade.

For many operators trading European routes, these costs are already being built into voyage planning – and the most prepared organisations are using that visibility to improve forecasting, sharpen commercial decisions, and prioritise efficiency investments with clearer returns.

Research commissioned by Wärtsilä, surveying 225 maritime leaders, found that 42% highlighted the balance between decarbonisation investment and acceptable returns as a central focus.

These leaders are not questioning whether they need to act on emissions. They are focusing on how to make action pay by aligning investment timing, operational measures and commercial strategy in a market that’s moving quickly.

Carbon Is Now a Voyage Cost

The inclusion of shipping in the EU ETS is reshaping voyage economics in a clear, measurable way.

Carbon allowances are now a direct voyage input, covering 100% of voyages between EU and EEA ports, and 50% of voyages starting or ending outside the EU. The cost scales directly with fuel consumption and the carbon intensity of the fuel being burned.

This creates a stronger link between operational performance and commercial outcomes by rewarding vessels and teams that can improve efficiency and fuel choice over time.

FuelEU Maritime adds a further layer. From 2025, limits came into effect on the greenhouse gas intensity of energy used on board ships calling at EU ports.

These will tighten progressively towards 2050.

The regulation is fuel-agnostic, which means operators have a choice in how they comply. That flexibility creates options, all while making fuel procurement, engine configuration and voyage planning more strategically important, because compliance and cost outcomes are now closely connected.

For coastal merchant operators, who tend to work on tighter margins and with older assets than their deep-sea counterparts, this shift in cost structure is particularly consequential.

Suboptimal fuel consumption is no longer just lost efficiency; it now translates into a measurable and increasingly material emissions cost - making even small performance gains commercially meaningful.

Efficiency as Exposure Management

The response is clear: build the capability to understand vessel performance with precision and in near real time.

That way teams can support commercial decisions, regulatory reporting, and timely operational action.

Remote performance monitoring and digital diagnostics provide the foundation for this. When data on fuel consumption, engine behaviour and emissions is captured continuously and assessed against established baselines, it becomes possible to identify where performance is beginning to deviate early enough to intervene and before this materially affects fuel use and emissions cost.

Hull fouling, inefficient load profiles, suboptimal fuel-air ratios, all of these affect fuel consumption and therefore emissions liability, and all of them are detectable early if the right monitoring is in place.

Predictive maintenance extends this further. An engine running outside its optimal parameters is burning more fuel and producing more emissions than it should.

Identifying that condition and addressing it on a planned schedule, rather than waiting for a failure, reduces both operating cost and emissions exposure in one intervention.

The financial case for this kind of approach has always existed. Carbon pricing makes it more straightforward to quantify to the operator.

A Shift in Decision-Making

Fuel has always been the largest single operating cost for most vessel types, but it has typically been managed as a procurement question.

How much bunker, at what price and from where. Those questions remain, but they now sit alongside others.

What is the emissions liability on this voyage? What is the CII trajectory for the year, and what does it mean for charter value?

Answering those questions can be done with the same performance data which supports maintenance planning and operational efficiency.

The difference is that the data now has a direct commercial application that did not exist in the same way before.

56% of maritime leaders said that anticipating and handling unexpected challenges requires constant attention. Fuel price volatility and carbon cost uncertainty are central factors - hard to control, but increasingly possible to manage with stronger data, planning and operational discipline.

The tools to do that already exist, and uptake is accelerating.

As carbon pricing matures, the financial case becomes easier to quantify. The operators that act early will be the ones better positioned to protect margins, strengthen charter value, and compete with confidence through the coming years.