Shipping’s decarbonisation dialogue is starting to sound a little schizophrenic.

For the first half of the year all we heard was that the IMO was not going far or fast enough and everyone was lobbying for a 1.5 degree alignment in terms of the 2050 decarbonisation targets with some stringent 2030 and 2040 waypoints.

We didn’t quite get there, but we weren’t far off.

So was that enough to catalyse the final investment decisions needed to get green fuel supplies off the ground? Well, no is the short answer.

And as for the industry’s efforts to accelerate efficiencies in the short term — it seems nobody is convinced that those 2030 targets that everyone was pushing for, are in any way achievable now. It’s just too much, too soon — we’re never going to make it.

The point is that not everyone’s pointing in the same direction. Now that we can’t blame the IMO for our collective inertia, how do we justify the fact that green shipping is not very green?

In today’s edition we tackle a few related issues of green fuel supply, not least the current topic du jour — methanol — as the Maersk marketing machine cranks into action for the launch of the genuinely ground-breaking Laura Maersk.

But we start with a bit of necessary context by revisiting those IMO decisions from MEPC80 — because it seems that the industry has been thinking about this on the beach over the summer and may be misremembering what has actually happened. 

Lloyd's List’s LISW podcasts are sponsored by DNV. Click here to view 2023 DNV/Lloyd’s List Intelligence Maritime Safety Trends report.

Speaking on today’s edition of the podcast:

• Aoife O’Leary, founder and CEO of Opportunity Green

• Dr Tristan Smith, director of UMAS

• Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill Ocean Transportation