Julien Boulland, Bureau Veritas’s head of sustainable shipping, outlined a multi-faceted approach for achieving emissions reductions, highlighting the role of operational improvements, the rise of alternative fuels, and the complexities of emerging regulations.

According to Boulland, recent data shows positive trends: “For the first year, we started to see a reduction in fuel consumption and also emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, when you multiply fuel that occur by the corresponding emission factor.” This reduction, he notes, comes even as the global shipping fleet has grown and travel distances have increased slightly.

Rather than a sudden shift to new fuels, Boulland credits this progress to strategies on operational excellence like slow steaming, efficient weather routing, and just-in-time arrival, which have immediate impacts on fuel consumption and emissions. “We think that an important element is operational excellence,” he emphasised. “Slow steaming, probably, most probably, because it has a huge impact on fuel consumption reduction.” He further noted that fuel shifts have played a marginal role, with LNG uptake progressing slowly but offering limited CO2 reductions.