The GMF’s latest progress report said the industry was well off track to meet its unofficial target of 5% scalable zero-emission fuel (SZEF, meaning green e-fuels and excluding liquefied natural gas) uptake by 2030.

The GMF set the target in 2021 as a way to show how focused efforts could snowball toward broader adoption. It argued this was crucial to meeting the IMO’s 2023 greenhouse gas strategy goals.

But the group’s latest progress report found green fuel demand and finance were not on track, despite some progress on the technology and training for seafarers.

UCL senior research fellow Domagoj Baresic said the green transition was “partially on track” overall.

Baresic said the direction of travel was more important than the year the fuel milestone was reached, which he suggested could be in the early 2030s.

The real risk was not failing to hit 5% by 2030, but “losing sight of the breakthrough altogether”.

Baresic said progress depended on how the IMO decided to classify the lifecycle assessment guidelines and rewards for zero-carbon fuels.

“In order for us to be fully on track, we need to see what happens next,” Baresic said.

Reaching 5% SZEF by 2030 would entail coming up with 0.6 exajoules of green power — about enough to run 600 15,000 teu boxships.

Virtually none exists for shipping today — and the NZF, if adopted, would only start taxing ships for a small amount of their emissions in 2028.

IMO secretary-general Arsenio Dominguez said the IMO was working to its diplomatic schedule.

“This is a marathon, but we are on track in this process,” he said.

“We’re going step by step. We’re not running towards the end goal just yet.”

Dominguez said the IMO was considering the lifecycle emissions of different fuels, including LNG and nuclear, because it had agreed to be fuel and technology-agnostic.

He said the green transition was neither free nor without challenges.

But Dominguez added: “It’s 2025. The amendments will be adopted next month, enter into force 2027. And from then onwards, of course, things will scale up.”

GMF chief executive Johanna Christensen said the industry had moved from ideas and concepts in 2017 to real progress on technology such as dual-fuel ships today.

“At this moment, they’re pockets of change,” she said. “They’re not system-wide.”

Christensen said the progress report represented a static snapshot, but the broader goal was more complex. Investments by single companies could make it easier for other parts of the supply to progress in their own goals.

“It’s a dynamic interaction between different parties and different players taking steps together,”  she said. 

The NZF will probably go up for a vote by the IMO’s 176 member states at the Marine Environment Protection Committee’s extraordinary session, which starts on October 13.