To achieve the Paris Agreement climate targets, all sectors, including the shipping industry, must ensure meaningful reductions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. To get there, zero-emissions ships must become the dominant and competitive choice, at the latest by 2030. But herein lies a conundrum. A zero-emission fleet is only commercially viable if zero-emission energy sources are competitive with traditional fuels. However, fossil fuels remain readily available, reliable, cheap, and compatible with existing ships and engines – creating a competitiveness gap that the market cannot solve on its own. New policies are needed, regulating and incentivising shipowners, operators and fuel providers in a direction that drives investments in new fuels and technologies to enable a viable zero-emission fleet. We need to move the needle now as there is no time to waste.

In this webinar co-organized by the Getting to Zero Coalition and the Oxford Smith School, academics from Oxford will present the findings of their report ‘Zero Emissions Shipping: Regulatory support options for decarbonising international shipping’, which identifies concrete policy tools that can accelerate the decarbonisation of shipping and make zero emission shipping investable at scale. This will be followed by an industry panel discussion.