*Emma Collier was there with her camera for allaboutshipping
At London International Shipping Week 2025, Acceleron brought together more than 150 people to tackle one of shipping’s toughest challenges: how to unlock the fuels needed to decarbonise. The session opened with a presentation of their new report, Deadlock: What’s Stopping Shipping’s Carbon-Neutral Fuel Transition?, delivered by Christoph Rofka, President, Medium and Low Speed at Acceleron.
Rofka cautioned that the number of vessels capable of running on alternative fuels is growing faster than the fuels themselves. The barriers to supply are “interlinked and interdependent,” he said, but with solidarity across sectors they can be broken. Aggregating demand for green hydrogen across industries will be one way to reach investable levels of supply, with ports acting as the natural points of convergence.
That presentation set the stage for a panel moderated by Martin Crawford-Brunt, Chief Executive Officer of Lookout Maritime and Council Member of the Baltic Exchange, joined by Patrick Verhoeven of the International Association of Ports and Harbors, Mark Simmonds of the British Ports Association, Chris Waddington of the International Chamber of Shipping, Isabelle Ireland of Intercontinental Energy, Matt Dunlop of V. Group and the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, and Rofka of Acceleron.
Catching up with Isabelle afterwards, she pointed to the breadth of representation as what made this discussion most valuable: ports, suppliers, and shipowners finally all at the same table. “Suppliers need to be at the table,” she said. “If a large supply is going to be required, shipowners have to understand where it could come from when they plan their strategies.” For her, it was a chance to set out the scale of Intercontinental Energy’s projects and their purpose to deliver competitive fuels at a level that can shift the market.
She also reflected on the contributions of her fellow panellists. Listening to Matt Dunlop describe the training and safety challenges of working with ammonia and other fuels, she said, was a reminder of the human realities that sit alongside industrial-scale projects. The transition will only succeed if those perspectives are considered together. No company or country can decarbonise shipping in isolation. Suppliers, offtakers, ports, bunkering companies, and seafarers will all need to move in step. “There is a lot to build,” she underlined, “but it’s also a tremendous opportunity for those who take the steps.” Her closing remark on the panel cut straight to the point: acceleration depends on clarity. We can only accelerate when we know what the regulatory framework looks like.
Martin Crawford-Brunt offered another later when we spoke: the commercial realities the industry cannot escape. “We can’t defy economic gravity. And if we think we can, we’re going to be disappointed. It’s a game of snakes and ladders — we’ll think we’re making progress, and then we get eaten by the head of the snake and go back a number of steps if we ignore it.”
