SHIPPING is not decarbonising in isolation.

Perhaps that’s an obvious point to be making in 2022, but it’s a point that needs to be talked about more inside the shipping industry.

The process by which we eliminate fossil fuels from seaborne trade is no longer a shipping problem. It never has been. The industry needs to start realising that it cannot achieve progress in silos.

There are important conversations still to be had about efficiency and innovation costs inside the industry, but the more important and urgent conversations are about shipping’s position and visibility within the wider global energy transition.

As energy ministers prepare for next month’s COP27 climate discussions in Egypt, the industry should be aligning itself to those conversations and looking for opportunities.

Joining up the decarbonisation efforts from ports, shipping companies, and energy firms is partly about cross-sector collaboration, but it’s also about engaging energy ministers as much transport departments.

We know all about the future fuels conundrum.

Energy producers won’t invest without offtakers and shipowners don’t know where to invest if they can’t be sure of fuel supplies.

But we’re still too often looking at this as a shipping issue.

The solutions are going to be multi sectoral and we need to have a much stronger collaboration with energy producers and the entire maritime value chain if we are to break the logjam. 

So as part of some wider conversations that we have been having recently, this week’s edition of the podcast offers another instalment in our recent series of progress reports on shipping’s path to zero carbon.

This week’s edition features:

• Christopher Wiernicki, Chairman, President and CEO of ABS

• Rasmus Bach Nielsen, Global Head of Fuel Decarbonisation at Trafigura.

• Katharine Palmer, Shipping Lead at the UNFCCC High Level Climate Champions

• Bud Darr, Executive Vice-President, Maritime Policy and Government Affairs, MSC Group