The Carbon crisis is changing everything in the industry. The cost of carbon emissions is now dynamically entering the equation, creating a new era where every ton of CO₂ counts and costs.
The cost of carbon emissions has permanently entered the life of shipping. It is no longer theories about “green reforms” and European directives. It is about real money, coming out of shipping companies’ treasuries and changing the entire logic of the industry.
An industry that, as I have mentioned in the past, has a lot of money, and everyone is looking at how to “grab” a piece of the pie… after all, it is known to everyone that the shipping industry has transformed over the last two decades so that as many people as possible can “eat”.
The European ETS alone is said to cost over 6 billion dollars this year. And Siglar Carbon predicts that by the end of the decade this number could exceed 50 billion per year. If other countries introduce their own taxes, we could be talking about 100 billion! We are talking about crazy numbers.
The new IMO measure, the so-called GFI, will be introduced in 2028 and will add another burden. Approximately 22 billion dollars to start with. However, no one knows if it will replace the others or simply be added on top of them. If the latter happens, then we will have a mess of regulations that will hit every market, every ship, every route differently.
In Europe, they predict that the carbon price will reach 150 dollars per ton of CO₂ by 2030. And then the game changes for everyone. From chartering to financing, everything will pass through the “cost of emissions”. In the past, we measured freight, fuel, bunkers… now we will also measure CO₂. The question is on whose backs these additional costs will fall.
From my own experience, I see that shipping has already entered a different era. And we will no longer be talking about an environmental issue but about a survival issue. Every ton of fuel counts, every voyage has a financial footprint. And the worst is that the smaller companies will struggle a lot to withstand these new enormous costs.
It is not easy for any of us. Regulations are falling one after the other, margins are narrowing and the pressure is growing. But if we want to stay in the game, we must adapt. The era of ‘burn and go’ is over. Now, every kilogram of fuel and every ton of emission counts, not only for the environment, but for the survival of the ship itself.
The modern seafarer sees all this in the daily operation of a ship, and at the same time sees the requirements increasing rapidly. How far all this will go is a question that currently has no answer. Simply put, the barrel has no bottom and this whole game seems that it will continue forever. Until in 10, 20 or 50 years autonomous ships come and no longer need seafarers.
