Mr. Vassilios Dimoulas moderated a panel discussion between distinguished Greek and Cypriot Shipping personalities, namely Mr. Antonis Faraklas, Managing director of Charterwell Maritime and Chartworld shipping Corporation, Dr. George Pateras, deputy chairman of Contships Management and former president of the Hellenic Chamber of Shipping, Captain Eberhard Koch, Chairman CEO and Partner of Osterreichscher Lloyd Shipping Group (OL Shipping) and Dr Loukas Barbaris, President of Safe Bulkers. The title of the panel was “THE DEBATE FOR NET ZERO - IMPLICATIONS ON FLEET RENEWAL - Navigating Through Commercial & Regulatory Uncertainty”.
The discussion started with an exchange of views on IMOs Net Zero Framework, its past, present and possible future. The panelists expressed concerns mainly about the risks of transforming IMO into a “bank” that would need to manage huge funds. It was mentioned that shipping has progressed impressively in the last couple of decades in energy efficiency and substantial reduction of emissions simply by self regulation and competition in performance. The CII was even proposed as an easy and practical metric to be used for assessing ships’ GHG emissions performance, despite its drawbacks. Dual fuel technologies, mainly LNG and methanol, although popular for large container liners have not yet found their way to tramp shipping or even smaller feeder containerships, due to cost and mainly difficulty in sourcing the fuels.
The discussion then turned to other factors affecting fleet renewal strategies, like geopolitics, tariffs, sanctions, shipyard availability and market conditions. The closing remarks by all panelists focused on the need for practical solutions and regulations that would provide true incentives to strive for achieving the IMO net zero targets.
