Reaching net zero will take more than just the IMO, says LR’s Brown

GETTING shipping to net zero cannot happen by industry and the International Maritime Organization “trying to go it alone”, according to the chief executive of Lloyd’s Register.

Nick Brown said the political divide that led to the IMO delay in October showed shipping was not immune to the factors holding back net zero in the world economy.

“I think what we are seeing is, or we have seen during this year, is a wider understanding of just how expensive the journey towards net zero is going to be for everybody, including the end consumer,” Brown said in an interview.

“And I’m not sure that governments around the world have particularly done a great job at communicating the cost of getting towards net zero to the end consumer.

“We’re talking trillions of dollars here to transition maritime transportation away from today’s fuels. That isn’t going to happen, I don’t think, without the end consumer and the biggest governments in the world wanting that to happen.”

Green e-fuels based on hydrogen were so expensive that making them would require demand from other industries such as steelmaking.

“I don’t think they are going to happen if it’s purely regulated for maritime,” Brown said.

Green hydrogen start-ups have hoped for years that shipping, because of its unusually powerful global regulator, could help fix the chicken and egg problem that has stopped progress being made in places like the UN COP meetings.

But Brown said shipping was one part of a much wider energy transition.

Even if governments and consumers wanted it, it was unrealistic to expect maritime to transition faster than all the other heavy industries.

Shipping has relied on residual fuel, essentially a waste product left over from cracking crude oil into jet fuel, diesel, petrol and other hydrocarbons. That cheap fuel would be an option as long as the world economy kept demanding fossil fuels.

“We shouldn’t think that we can get to a complete new energy supply, fuel supply paradigm as a standalone industry,” Brown said.

“To some extent, really, the challenge is: how do you ensure the whole world needs less crude?”

But the industry had made “massively important” progress in the past five years in showing that alternative fuels were technically possible.

“Hopefully, over the next 12 months, we’ll prove even more technical viability of different engines using different fuels. And then we’ll be able to get the skills and the safety procedures in place for pretty much everything.”

*Nick Brown will be a guest panellist at the Lloyd’s List Annual Outlook Forum: 2026 and Beyond on December 11, 2025. For more information click here