DNV maps shipping’s regulatory fuel uncertainty

DNV has modelled four possible regulatory futures for international shipping as continuing uncertainty around the IMO Net-Zero Framework leaves vessel owners facing widely different outcomes for fuel demand, efficiency investment, and propulsion strategy. Its 2026 Maritime Forecast to 2050 finds that stronger global regulatory signals could lead the fleet to consume up to 25% less energy by 2050 than under a future shaped mainly by regional rules.

The spread matters because vessels ordered today can remain in operation for decades. Decisions over engines, fuel-storage systems, retrofit capability, and efficiency equipment must therefore remain commercially workable through regulatory conditions that are still being negotiated, while lower-emission fuel production and port infrastructure develop on separate investment timetables.

DNV’s scenarios range from adoption of the IMO Net-Zero Framework broadly in its current form to outright rejection and a prolonged period of regulatory deadlock. Each produces a different combination of fuel economics, efficiency adoption, and greenhouse-gas emissions.

The resulting spread in lower-emission fuel demand is particularly large. DNV estimates shipping could require between 4 million and 22 million tonnes of oil equivalent of low-GHG fuels by 2030, rising to between 33 million and 185 million tonnes by 2050.

For fuel suppliers, that makes project economics difficult to fix. Investment in methanol, ammonia, biofuels, synthetic fuels, or other alternatives depends partly on confidence that enough vessels will need the product at a price able to support new production. A market towards the bottom of DNV’s range looks very different from one approaching 185 Mtoe.

Shipowners face the mirror image of the same problem. Committing heavily to one fuel pathway can create exposure if production remains geographically limited, prices remain high, or later regulations favour a different emissions profile. Even technically mature propulsion equipment cannot remove uncertainty over the cost and availability of the energy that feeds it.

DNV estimates that projects currently in the pipeline could theoretically supply a maximum of around 270 Mtoe of low-GHG fuel in 2030, although actual production is likely to be lower because projects can be delayed or cancelled. Shipping will also compete with aviation, chemicals, industry, and other sectors for the same lower-emission fuels.

The economics of carbon reduction vary accordingly. DNV puts abatement costs across the fuel pathways it assesses at roughly $180 to $1,290 per tonne of CO2 avoided. Regulation and market incentives therefore have a large influence over which options become commercially viable rather than merely technically possible.

Efficiency is the less speculative part of that equation because reducing the energy required to move a vessel provides value regardless of which fuel ultimately dominates. DNV’s case study of hydrodynamic measures fitted to a 5,000 TEU container ship indicates potential annual fuel savings of 16%, with an estimated payback time of roughly one to four years depending on future fuel prices.

Many efficiency upgrades can also be installed during planned dry docking, reducing the operational penalty of retrofit work. Hull and propeller measures, wind assistance, air lubrication, improved machinery control, voyage optimisation, and other technologies vary by vessel, but all reduce exposure to future energy prices by cutting the amount of fuel that has to be purchased.

The regulatory backdrop remains fluid. At its 84th Marine Environment Protection Committee session, held from 27 April to 1 May, the IMO agreed further intersessional negotiations intended to narrow differences around the Net-Zero Framework before MEPC 85.

Two intersessional meetings are scheduled for September and November, with MEPC 85 due to run from 30 November to 3 December. The IMO currently expects the second extraordinary session considering the framework to resume on 4 December, subject to confirmation by MEPC 85.

That timetable leaves owners making fleet and chartering decisions months before the regulatory position is settled. It also affects infrastructure providers, fuel producers, and ports, because the volume and location of demand will influence where storage, bunkering, grid connections, and production capacity are commercially justified.

Freight buyers are exposed indirectly through rates and emissions reporting. Fuel premiums, carbon charges, vessel-efficiency differences, and alternative-fuel availability can all influence the cost of moving cargo, while customers are increasingly asking carriers for emissions data to support their own Scope 3 accounting.

A fragmented regional approach would also create different economics across trade lanes, potentially encouraging owners to deploy particular vessels or fuels where regulation is most favourable. A global system would not make decarbonisation cheap, but it would give investment decisions a more consistent set of assumptions.

DNV’s four scenarios do not identify one winning technology, which is largely the point. Shore power, plug-in hybridisation, alternative fuels, onboard carbon capture, efficiency retrofits, and other technologies appear in different combinations depending on vessel type and regulatory outcome.

For shipping companies, the immediate investment case is therefore strongest where a measure pays under several futures rather than only one. The gap between DNV’s 33 million and 185 million tonne 2050 fuel-demand outcomes is wide enough to make confident long-term fuel forecasts look premature. Cutting the energy required by the vessel is one of the few responses that remains useful whichever number eventually proves closer to reality.