According to the Asia-Pacific session of the Global Energy Summit (September 2021), the pace of Asia’s energy transition remains too slow even despite its efforts to accelerate it.

This has been mainly due to a lack of public policy on it, which leaves many details unaddressed and discourages companies from investing in energy transition.

The recent revision of the marine environmental regulatory framework by the IMO aims to make this transition more inclusive for state members and industry that may struggle to navigate through the energy transition.

This revision is expected to work in tandem with ongoing green initiatives such as  the Getting to Zero Coalition, promoted by the Global Maritime Forum, which aims at bringing together key industry players to tackle the decarbonisation problem, and among its main directives is the development of ‘Green Corridors’.

These would be trade routes where all parties involved would be carbon neutral. For these to succeed, however, it will be necessary: (1) corridor-level consensus on fuel pathways, (2) policy support to help close the cost-gap for higher-cost zero-emission fuels, and (3) value-chain initiatives to pool demand – the change towards clean fuels must take place across the entire supply chain.

Amongst the most significant challenges to this, and all other energy transition programmes, is choosing what type of energy to transition to Ammonia and hydrogen seem to be the long-term solution for the industry as they are both carbon neutral; by 2050 they are predicted to supply 60% of the market’s energy needs. While hydrogen and ammonia are deemed as the fuels of the future, methanol and LNG are the alternative in the short-term: Maersk will launch the world’s first carbon neutral fleet in 2023, running on methane.