ECSA calls for inclusion of fuel suppliers under the scope of FuelEU Maritime 

The European Community Shipowners’ Associations (ECSA) calls on the European Parliament and the Council to support the mandatory inclusion of fuel suppliers under the scope of FuelEU Maritime as proposed by the European Parliament in Amendment 129.

The amendment approved on October 19th says that if a company makes a contract with a fuel supplier for specific fuels, the contract should include provisions that hold the fuel supplier responsible for compensating the company if they don’t deliver the fuels as agreed and the company incurs penalties.

“As trilogue negotiations on the FuelEU Maritime enter in their final phase, it is key to ensure the final text contributes to a successful energy transition of shipping. To that end, we need all hands on deck to make sufficient quantities of low- and zero-carbon fuels available in the market at an affordable price,” ECSA said.

The FuelEU Maritime Regulation has been described as crucial for promoting the uptake of sustainable and scalable fuels in shipping. The demand for clean fuels from shipping is growing, but at the same time the industry is calling on the legislative bodies to ensure that fuel suppliers make clean fuels available in sufficient quantities.

Namely, the regulation calls for the penalization of shipowners for each non-compliant port call.

The current draft of the regulations underlies for accredited verifiers to calculate the amount of the penalty by multiplying the amount of EUR 250 by megawatts of power installed on-board and by the number of completed hours spent at berth.

“It is key to ensure that shipowners are not unduly penalised if the sustainable fuels necessary for compliance are not delivered. This provision, together with a binding target for maritime fuel suppliers as proposed by the Parliament in RED III, is essential for the energy transition of shipping,” ECSA added.

“Conditional to the mandatory inclusion of fuel suppliers under the scope of FuelEU Maritime and the availability of fuels, in principle ECSA supports the proposal of the Parliament in Amendment 82 on a sub-quota for renewable fuels of non-biological origin (Article 4 a (new)).”

In addition, ECSA supports the introduction of a high multiplier for the use of sustainable and scalable fuels for shipping under the FuelEU Maritime Regulation.

To achieve the goals of FuelEU, it’s even more important to invest the revenue from the ETS and FuelEU back into the sector and create a level-playing field for companies to invest in the more expensive clean fuels.