1. Carbon clarity reveals what happens next

The International Maritime Organization will not wave a magic wand in 2025, but the outcome of regulatory decisions on shipping’s carbon emissions-reduction plan to 2050 will be seismic.

The specifics of these policy measures will determine the shape of international shipping, capital flows in the maritime value chains and have major implications for the economies of many countries and global trade.

They will determine whether final investment decisions are made to kick-start the supply of zero-carbon fuels and the infrastructure it requires — or not.

They will determine whether the first-movers who have collectively invested billions of dollars in decarbonisation projects and spawned voluntary projects — advancing everything from transparent green finance to climate-aligned chartering — are joined by a cohort of fast-followers, or abandoned with stranded assets.

Alternatively, the IMO will fail to agree a sufficiently convincing plan. In which case, the global shipping industry will be forced into a costly, regionalised patchwork of regulatory regimes that undermines the very notion of a global regulation for a global industry.

Either way, clarity regarding shipping’s carbon emissions will be the defining factor of 2025 — and arguably the next few decades.

2. Trump 2.0 

Even before he is inaugurated on January 20, trade lanes are adjusting to the unpredictable disruption expected from a second bout of Trumpenomics.

Yes, the rhetoric of campaign speeches is quite different from the reality of governing — and no, he will not deliver everything he says he will. But rest assured that Donald Trump will be a defining force shaping shipping next year.

The anticipated US U-turn on climate policies will not be enough to derail shipping’s pivotal carbon decisions (Trump holds limited sway inside the halls of the IMO). The momentum behind US domestic clean energy and global climate action is resilient enough to withstand four more years of Trump.

But a climate-sceptic US does shift the dial on much of the green investment timelines that would otherwise be in play. The US under Trump, for example, will be cemented as the world’s leading producer of blue hydrogen — but its green hydrogen market will shrink quite dramatically.

The more immediate implications, however, will focus on trade, tariffs and whatever emerges as US foreign policy in response to the growing global series of conflicts, from Russia to the Middle East.

Increased use of tariffs will disrupt trade lanes in the near term and potentially result in demand destruction mid-term and a less-conducive global trade environment.

The big issue to watch will be the relationship between the US and China. To the extent that this issue causes a reflowing of trade, it will have significant implications for shipping rates.

Meanwhile, much of Trump’s sanctions strategy remains unclear — and, on past experience, unpredictable.

Sanctions served as a key tool in the first Trump administration’s foreign policy strategy, which fixated on a maximum economic pressure campaign against Iran.

It is reasonable to expect that sanctions will play a prominent role in Trump’s foreign policy agenda in his second term.

In short: brace for impact — 2025 promises to be a bumpy ride!

3. Fuel pragmatism takes hold

The outcomes of the carbon emissions regulatory debate will determine the future choices of which ships are ordered, and when.

But IMO optimists and sceptics alike realise that the immediate choices are commercially limited in the near term. The outbreak of fuel pragmatism that has seen a shift back towards conventional fuel and liquefied natural gas this year is set to continue into 2025.

When Lloyd’s List readers were polled in December on what fuel type they would choose if forced to order next year, 32% said LNG and 24% went with conventional.

Partly that’s a technology pushback — the ammonia engines are coming, but testing is taking longer than initial expectations and nobody is about to start cutting corners on a dangerous fuel that is too expensive to run anytime soon.

There is also a growing acceptance that ammonia is likely to be unusable as a bunker fuel until around 2030, due to technological and infrastructure difficulties.

Mainly, though, it is still the unanswered question over whether regulatory clarity next year will be sufficient to spur both fuel supply investment and bridge the cost gap to conventional.

Making a call on that in 2025 seems overly optimistic, so expect another year of procrastination and owners making the least-worst decisions available to them.

4. Newbuilding prices to come down, possibly

High among the list of winners in 2024 you will find the shipbuilders, notably the Chinese yards.

China’s success in attracting new orders has been so strong that it now commands a 71% share of the total cargo-carrying vessel newbuilding orderbook, up from 65% in 2023.

But right now, high asset values remain a key hurdle to even higher deal flows. Besides, shipyards are full, newbuilding prices are resilient and delivery dates are several years out, limiting options.

Yet consider this as a scenario: increased capacity and reduction in liner ordering leads to increased available capacity in the shipyards and a decline in pricing, led by Chinese shipyards.

Well, possibly...

Despite bulging orderbooks, the shift in freight markets and potential slowdown in the industry’s green transition are certainly accumulating risks of overcapacity, while potential geopolitical shocks are intensifying with Trump’s ascendancy.

However, those yard slots are still extremely tight, so even if prices drop, it is likely to be a slow process. But the price reduction itself is a very important signal.

And, the CNY exchange rate may be substantially devalued next year to counter US tariffs, which would also give Chinese shipyards room to lower prices.

Watch this space.

5. Shipping to get more — and less — transparent

Lloyd’s List’s previous outlooks have confidently claimed that shipping would continue to have transparency thrust up on it via a combination of carbon accounting, financial compliance and supply chain digitalisation.

We were half right and continue to double down on that aspect of the forecast for 2025.

Obviously, there is a significant portion of the global fleet that is not adhering our transparency predictions — and it seems that for 2025, there is a chance that the dark fleet may yet become darker still.

We may have been a little early with our previous predictions of industry-wide openness, but we stand by the fact that the first signs of greater transparency and collaboration across the value chain are now emerging.

Shipping has been the opaque element of the end-to-end supply chain until now, but the ‘scope three’ requirements of its customers, and its customers’ customers, suggests a one-way direction of travel when it comes to opening up.

Such shifts may seem all the more galling when others are sailing at great profit with impenetrable ownership and imaginary insurance, but the level of transparency that situation has enforced upon others is undeniable.

We have never asked more from the legitimate end of shipping and not knowing who sits behind a ship, company or legal entity, is more often than not now a barrier to trade.

So while a worrying portion of the world fleet may be the most opaque it has ever been, the darker the dark fleet gets, the more it forces the rest of the industry to open up.

6. A response too late to fix dark fleet safety or cyber risk

The political efficacy of sanctions was initially measured by the severity of the financial damage they could impart on Moscow — but finally this year, politicians have woken up to the damage they could be causing to themselves.

European governments are increasingly worried that the uninsured dark fleet presents a clear and present danger to its coastline. But they are likely clocking this risk too late.

Accidents have already started happening and there is now an inevitability that one of these uninsured hazards is going to cause a major disaster. At that point, there will be questions about why nothing was done sooner.

There will be calls to further impede freedom on navigation, and friendly ports will no longer allow entry to these vessels, further alienating the fleet, which will get darker and further out of the reach of mainstream shipping standards and safety norms.

There is a similar air of inevitability when it comes to cyber risk.

Everyone knows the threat, has heard doom-mongering scenarios set out by worried-looking chief technology officers, and understands how expensive it is to have to re-boot an entire global company.

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that global supply chains are vulnerable.

The energy value chain is under siege, digitally speaking, fending off attacks on a daily basis. Their spend on cyber defence is commensurate with the threat they face. In shipping, that is not the case.

At some point, that bad actor is going to find it easier to poke the soft underbelly of that value chain and shipping is currently looking very vulnerable.

In both the case of the dark fleet and a cyber attack, the responses will likely be too late.

7. AI will start to deliver, but not revolutionise

The artificial intelligence hype is already starting to look doubtful, but in 2025 the industry will start to push for more practical and credible application of the nascent technology (rather than assuming it is the panacea to all ills).

Agentic AI, the new generation of systems and models that can act autonomously to achieve goals without the need for constant human guidance, have a real and valuable application — but the work has to be focused.

Another acronym you will be hearing about more in 2025 is ERP — enterprise resource planning. These are the software systems that help businesses manage their day-to-day operations.

Right now, the ERP landscape in shipping is not really fit for purpose, but that’s changing fast.

The industry has always been risk-averse, so most will wait and follow when they think they are losing out. But next year we will see a few pioneering companies talking openly about the transformation of their operations through more advanced technologies.

It may be a prediction too far, but 2025 could be the year that the digitalisation rhetoric starts to look more like reality.

8. Africa’s voice will be louder in 2025

African countries are going to play an important role in delivering future fuels to the shipping sector. In 2025, expect Namibia to come up in conversation, a lot.

With climate talks focused on a “just and equitable transition”, much of the top-level finance focus is now on Africa.

Namibia’s vast renewable energy resources and strategic location make it ideal for green hydrogen production and, with the initial test phases of projects underway, if the political stars align with a regulatory agreement at the IMO and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2025 could be the year where production ramps up.

9. Older, safer, more efficient ships

The flipside of the pragmatism argument when it comes to future fuels is that there needs to be a more dramatic focus on the current fleet’s efficiency.

While much of the low-hanging fruit was picked off years ago, there are still basic commercial blockers preventing significant gains on everything from supply chain efficiency to the deeply unsexy topic of paints and coatings.

But alongside the focus on operational efficiency measures comes the question of how long quality older ships can be kept in service — assuming they are sufficiently efficient to make it through the regulatory hoops.

There is a push within class to find ways to certify older ships as being seaworthy, thus increasing lifespan and reducing their carbon footprint.

But at the same time, the vetting focus is getting younger and younger. With RightShip dropping the age trigger on bulkers from 14 to 10 years to address their woeful record compared to tankers and gas, the balance between long-term efficiency and more rigorous safety vetting needs to be found.

Success in shipping is about navigating the unexpected and making sure you maximise profits when the times are good in order to ride out the downcycles. Discipline is key, and it’s not always evident who has played the best hand until the bad times hit.

Generally, we would be going into the new year with a pretty certain idea of how the markets will play out. But after five years of unforeseen supply shocks, nobody is expecting anything beyond the unexpected.

In tankers, the prospect that fleet growth in 2025 might outpace demand and further pressure rates cannot be ruled out.

In containers, if carriers make an impromptu return to the Red Sea, then overcapacity becomes a very real issue almost overnight.

In dry bulk, nobody is expecting a stellar 2025, but the sector’s fortunes could be much worse if not for tightening supply, so with only a few swing factors changing, all bets are off.

As our end-of-year outlook poll makes clear, it is geopolitical risk that is going to be the defining factor in shaping fortunes next year — and that means there is little to forecast for 2025 beyond more uncertainty.

This article is part of Lloyd’s List’s outlook for 2025