Page 28: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2025)

Back to the Drawing Board 2025

ALTERNATIVE FUELS

Sustainable Fuel Chicken and Egg Redux.

Maybe Some Ports Can Fix It.

By Rik van Hemmen places el panel discus- n a recent sustainable fuel panel discus- places unfair burdens on crew my self sucked sion, I once again found my self sucked crews. Another fuel may into the sustainable fuel chicken and egg icken and egg be be useful in one spe-

I ci? c conundrum. ci? c segment, but does not shipowners I have discussed it before; shipowners not interact with other seg uel for which will not buy ships that use a fuel for which segments and thereby dev sts and fuel no viable supply chain exists and fuel develops inherent inef- ci suppliers will not develop supply chains for pply chains for ? ? ciencies with the sup- plie which no buyers exist. pliers who need to sup- ply ult to In general, it is very dif? cult to ply multiple fuels. break a chicken and egg conun- n- T The public may not care a drum, except through a direct care and simply say, well that is th directive or through, often, that is the shipowner and fuel supplier’s very large, subsidies. supplier’s problem, but noth- ing is fur Direct directives often ing is further from the truth.

Generally, leave the problem solu- Generally, that truth remains hidden fo tion to the market. As such, hidden for a period of time when IMO tells shipowners an and then a major di- ‘thou shalt achieve such and saster occurs and we such maximum CO2 emissions s are off to the Exx- any by such time,’ there may be many on Valdez/Ozone

Hole/Chernobyl racesagain endingonhow solution approaches and depending on how Hole/Chernobyl races again.

the ships fall (pun intended) there could be one or more domi- The public should have a say in the solution, but the nant solutions. However, there is no guarantee that these solu- public as a whole is very bad at coming up with solutions. tions are optimal. So is government. Is there anything out there with suf? cient

One of those solutions may be a very dangerous fuel that power to at least drive the solutions into a rational and equi- happens to be most economical to a speci? c ship owner, but table direction?

Image above © Anatolii/AdobeStock 28 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • October 2025

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