The Daily View: Not when, but if?

AT POSIDONIA 2022’s Capital Link conference, the talk was of “Decarbonisation: Your next business plan”.

The same event in 2026 will tackle the topic with the more modest tagline: “Aligning regulation, reality and results.”

The reality in question? No regulation, at least not globally, and precious little in the way of results so far.

Expect shipowners Maria Angelicoussis, Evangelos Marinakis, George Economou and others to press their case to scrap the IMO Net-Zero Framework, a plan for a global price on shipping emissions.

They have been lobbying hard to stop the NZF from passing, with an eye on protecting future oil and gas investments.

They will seek to reframe the green shipping debate — from “difficult yet necessary”, to “futile and misguided”.

The phalanx of Posidonians gathered to see them probably won’t take much convincing.

Trump’s war on Iran has done the heavy lifting for them; no one is that bothered about going green amid global turmoil in energy markets.

But the absence of global rules only makes regional and national greenhouse gas rules more likely.

China has built up huge renewable energy supply capacity, and its regulators are working on ways to create demand for them absent an international framework, our story reports.

China Classification Society president Zhao Yan said of the green transition: “Challenges are significant, but the direction has not changed.”

Posidonia 2026 will help clarify how much the oil and gas lobby can change the debate from a question of how and when, to a question of if.

Declan Bush
Senior reporter, Lloyd’s List

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