Shipping's Fuel Transition Hinges on a Number Nobody Has Agreed On Yet

International shipping is being asked to decarbonize before it knows what it will burn.

By Paul Morgan (gCaptain) – Vessels capable of running on methanol, ammonia or ethanol are already entering the fleet, yet a new joint study from the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization and Boston Consulting Group makes an uncomfortable point plain: none of these fuels is currently cheap enough to displace conventional bunkers at scale, and the regulation meant to close that gap is still being argued over.

The study models fuel adoption out to 2050 under three regulatory scenarios, built around the International Maritime Organization’s