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European Sustainable Transport Investment Plan - STIP How to boost investment in clean fuels for shipping

Hydrogen Europe — 2025-07-15

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Access to clean maritime fuels is a top priority for the decarbonisation of the shipping sector. The Draghi report on the “Future of European Competitiveness” identifies shipping as one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonise, requiring around €40 billion in annual investments between 2031 and 2050. As such, shipping has been recognised in the Clean Industrial Deal (CID) as a priority sector to be supported on its path to the deployment of renewable and low-carbon fuels for shipping. This is an opportunity to develop a robust European industrial base for clean maritime fuels, which is essential to meet climate goals and secure Europe’s leadership in clean tech and clean fuels for the energy transition.

The Clean Maritime Fuels Platform welcomes the global climate agreement reached at the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) in April 2025 and encourages the EU to pursue its efforts to ensure the final agreement is adopted in Autumn. The critically important package of new greenhouse gas emissions reduction regulations – the “IMO Net-Zero Framework” – will help ensure international shipping’s transition to netzero. Once the IMO agreement is adopted, the Commission must as a matter of priority initiate a simultaneous and coordinated review of FuelEU Maritime and EU ETS to ensure a full harmonisation with the IMO measures considering the high ambition of the IMO agreement.

Shipping will be the first sector to have a globally agreed binding carbon pricing mechanism. The transition of international shipping to net-zero is expected to further increase demand for renewable and low-carbon fuels at international level. Thus, the IMO measure will be an opportunity for the European energy producers to make these fuels available in the market as long as the necessary investments are made.

The Platform stresses that building a supply chain for renewable and low-carbon fuels in Europe is a priority to make the European industrial cluster competitive, to build industrial capacity in Europe and to provide shipping with the clean fuels needed for the energy transition.

However, renewable and low-carbon fuels projects face significant uncertainties that deter public and private investment. These include technological risks and high upfront capital requirements that disadvantage first movers. Additional obstacles include the higher production costs of renewable and low-carbon fuels with respect to conventional fuels, and a mismatch of business models between producers, who seek long-term contracts at prices sufficient to remunerate their investment, and users, for whom shorter-term commitments for smaller fuel volumes bear less risk. These factors create high financial risks and uncertainty that may be insurmountable without more tailored public support than what the current EU Hydrogen Bank and ETS Innovation Fund schemes provide.

The recent Szczecin Declaration puts forward concrete measures to de-risk investment in clean fuels in Europe under the upcoming Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP). We call on the Commission to develop dedicated maritime funding windows for the production, distribution, and uptake of clean, safe and affordable maritime fuels to decarbonise this hard-to-abate sector in its upcoming STIP. The measures should be short-term and scalable.

To address these challenges, we urge the European Commission to:

Include renewable and low-carbon fuels and innovative technologies for shipping, one of the most difficult-to-decarbonise sectors of the economy, in the scope of the upcoming Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP).
Harness the STIP to de-risk investments using EU and national ETS revenues. A requirement to direct the national ETS revenues from shipping in the maritime sector should be introduced in EU law, as long as the shipping sector continues to pay for its emissions under the EU ETS. National ETS revenues should be invested in the uptake of clean maritime fuels and clean maritime technologies. This should result in a ramp up of manufacturing capacity in Europe, in line with the benchmark of the Net-Zero Industry Act and the reindustrialisation objective of the CID.
In particular, STIP should develop dedicated mechanisms for maritime as soon as possible, financed by both the EU and Member States, to support production and uptake of renewable and low-carbon fuels. This should especially address the uncertainty arising from the higher production costs of these fuels with respect to conventional fuels, long-term offtake commitments required, and market volatility, which are currently hindering projects in Europe from delivering large volumes of renewable and low-carbon fuels. The Innovation Fund eligibility criteria and application process should be reviewed to take into account the particularity of operation, characteristics and modus operandi of all shipping sectors. In addition, administrative burden should be limited to ensure that SMEs, which are the backbone of the shipping sector, can apply to the Innovation Fund calls and access this support.
Facilitate the role of ports as energy hubs through scalable renewable and lowcarbon fuels infrastructure mandates and fostering international cooperation among ports.

The energy transition of the shipping sector is vital to Europe’s climate goals and industrial leadership. European shipping is a strategic sector for Europe, carrying 76% of 3 the EU’s external trade and ensuring security of supply of energy, food and goods. We look forward to working with policymakers to design a Sustainable Transport Investment Plan that drives competitiveness and supports the energy transition of the economy.

Who we are

The new Clean Maritime Fuels Platform is a bottom-up industry initiative aiming to enhance communication between the shipping sector and fuel producers and to identify common challenges and possible solutions, considering the implementation of the Fit for 55 package and the transition to a net-zero economy by 2050.