OceanScore: “FuelEU can work for you”

2025 dawns on a new era for European shipping. FuelEU, the latest piece of EU legislation to step ahead of the IMO standards for decarbonisation of ships, has entered force. Shipowners will pay around three times the cost of fuel for non-compliance, meaning that many vessels already on the water will be requiring the retrofit of new equipment, fuel tanks and even engines in order to keep up.

While the costs of FuelEU will remain lower than that of EU ETS for the time being, this situation will upend drastically by 2030. Thereafter, the cost of non-compliance with FuelEU will represent a cost many times that of ETS, and pose a serious operational challenge for fleets.

OceanScore’s Albrecht Grell, managing director, pointed out that the needle can be threaded in such a way that shipowners have the opportunity to make money from FuelEU, unlike other legislation which exists only as a ‘stick’. “If this is well-managed between the owner, operator and charterer, there are actually opportunities with FuelEU,” he said. “But this will only work if you collaborate – if you take a straightforward, ‘I don’t give a damn’ approach, the opportunities will go to someone else.”