Setting Course, an ABS Podcast

Countdown to FuelEU Maritime with Scorpio and European Commission

• American Bureau of Shipping • Season 1 • Episode 12

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As the maritime industry grapples with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we have seen a multitude of regulations intended to drive progress. Now we have the FuelEU Maritime Regulation, which introduces the concept of well-to-wake carbon equivalent emissions per megajoule of energy and it enters into force in January 2025.

On this episode of Setting Course, an ABS Podcast, Francesco Bellusci, Managing Director of Scorpio Ship Management, Ricardo Batista, Policy Officer with the European Commission’s DG-MOVE, and Stamatis Fradelos, ABS Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, join host Brad Cox, ABS, to discuss the implementation and challenges of FuelEU. The group discusses wind-assisted propulsion incentives, the role of carbon capture technology and the regulation’s emissions pooling mechanism.

If you like this episode, share it with your friends, leave a review, or send feedback to podcast@eagle.org. More episodes are available at www.eagle.org/podcast and all major podcast platforms.

Key Points

  • The FuelEU Maritime Regulation aims to decarbonize maritime transport by reducing carbon intensity and promoting the use of renewable fuels.
  • Wind-assisted propulsion is seen as a technology that can contribute to emissions reduction and incentives for using it are included in the regulation.
  • Carbon capture is not currently included in the regulation, but there is potential for its inclusion in the future.
  • The pooling function in FuelEU incentivizes compliance and rewards overachievers by allowing companies to pool ships and trade surplus emissions.
  • FuelEU is seen as a first step toward global implementation of a similar International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation.
  • Collaboration and dialogue among stakeholders are essential for the successful implementation of decarbonization measures in the maritime sector.


Guests
Francesco Bellusci is the Managing Director of Scorpio Ship Management. Francesco was Technical Director in Scorpio from 1995, Designated Person Ashore (DPA) from 1997 and was appointed General Manager in 2008. He has been the Managing Director since 2010. Francesco was instrumental for the success of Scorpio Tankers fleet renewal into ECO design and the transition from Scorpio Bulkers into Eneti Inc. and wind offshore renewable.

Ricardo Batista is a Policy Officer with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport (DG-MOVE), Maritime Transport unit. In the Commission, Ricardo is engaged in the development, negotiation and preparatory work for implementing the FuelEU Maritime Regulation under the Fit for 55 package. Before joining the European Commission, Ricardo worked in the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), responsible for technical and scientific support to the Commission on several topics of ship safety and sustainability, with a focus on energy systems. Ricardo has previous experience as a Marine Engineer onboard naval ships and a Naval Architect involved with newbuild and retrofit works. He also has classification society experience.

Stamatis Fradelos is ABS Vice President of Regulatory Affairs. The Regulatory Affairs team interfaces with the IMO, flag Administrations and the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS), facilitating the application of regulations and maintaining ABS and clients’ awareness on regulatory issues being progressed and developed internationally. Stamatis is also a member of IACS board of directors, the IACS council and the IACS Sub-Committee on Quality Policy participating in IACS governance and strategic decisions.

Brad Cox (00:07.6)
Welcome to Setting Course, an ABS podcast, where we're charting the future of the marine and offshore industries. I'm Brad Cox and I'll be your host today.

We have a special episode on tap for you today. We all know the maritime industry is grappling with a wave of regulations and initiatives all aimed at reducing emissions. One of those regulations that should be on everybody’s radar is of course FuelEU. This is one that has massive potential to drive radical change for the industry, and not just for ships visiting EU ports. 

By January, shipping really needs to understand well-to-wake carbon equivalent emissions per megajoule of energy. And if you had a hard time keeping up with that, you’re going to want to stick around.

To shine some light on what this will mean to the industry, we’re joined by three important guests. 

With us today is Francesco Bellusci, the Managing Director of Scorpio Ship Management, which  operates more than 140 ships around the globe. We also have Ricardo Batista, a Policy Officer with the European Commission DG-MOVE. Ricardo has been involved in the development of FuelEU from the start. And we also have Stamatis Fradelos. He is the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at ABS. ABS is working with shipowners and operators to help them really understand these regulations. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

Stamatis Fradelos (01:16.5)
Thank you, Brad.

Francesco Bellusci (01:17.7)
Thank you.

Ricardo Batista (01:18.6)
Thank you, Brad.

Brad Cox (01:19.575)
Stamatis, and Ricardo, you can certainly provide some insight here as well to get us started. Can you break down FuelEU a little bit and give a high-level view of how it will impact ship owners?

Stamatis Fradelos (01:33.011)
Okay, so my understanding the FuelEU Maritime Regulation is a technical measure, which is designed to decarbonize maritime transport, applying three objectives. So it's a different concept compared with the EU ETS. These concepts are: 

To reduce the carbon intensity of the energy used on board on a well-to-wake basis. So, they have defined a baseline in the year 2020. They calculated the average GHG intensity, the energy used at that time using the MRV data and then they are going to apply some limits which are going to be used every five years. And of course we're starting the year 2025 with the first year of implementation.

The next one is to promote the use of onshore power supply in the main European ports. And there will be some specific obligations for passenger ships and container ships to connect to on-power supply starting in the year 2030. 

And the last one is to incentivize the uptake of renewable fuels of non-biological origin. So there is a reward factor, which is included into the calculation formula, to reward the use of these type of fuels and also the wind-assisted propulsion which we have seen also there's another factor to promote the use of the installation of these technologies on board the ships.

Ricardo Batista (03:10.823)
If I may add, first I would like to say that I'm usually the one explaining FuelEU, but I've never heard such a good explanation, structured objective, so I would like to congratulate Stamatis already for this. So now on my side I will not repeat what Stamatis already very well said, I will just indicate that FuelEU is one of the elements of the Fit for 55 in Europe. The legislative package includes other legislative packages important for maritime transport. Stamatis mentioned briefly the extension of the ETS to maritime transport. This is a really important one as it brings the market-based measure in the EU context to applying a price on carbon emissions — a cap and a price on carbon emissions from ships.

The alternative fuel infrastructure regulation, which Stamatis mentioneds the obligations for container ships and passenger ships above 5,000 gross tons to connect to shore-power, but the ports, the main ports covered by the alternative fuel infrastructure regulation, they will also be obliged to develop infrastructure for connection. So there is a supply and demand approach, provided on a wider context of a market-based measure provided by ETS. I would encapsulate all the concepts in the Fitfor55 in one main objective: to ensure energy transition in shipping and help decarbonization of the sector through promotion of viable business cases, both for promotion of renewable and low-carbon fuels, but also connection to shore power and other technologies, which without regulatory support would not find the landscape for investments that in this context is provided in the EU. And finally, the Fuel EU is very much designed as a pilot project, allow me to say, because we are very much focused on international development. We're very much focused on the worldwide reaching regulations that cover the very nature of international shipping. So we see the FuelEU Maritime as a contribution from the EU on setting the first step towards the wider IMO goals.

Brad Cox (05:26.522)
Right. And you mentioned the fuels and the technologies that are being developed. It feels almost like a chicken and egg moment where the regulations are incentivizing, in a way, the development of these things. Is that really the intent behind these to really push those along, in a sense?

Ricardo Batista (05:43.983)
Very much. The FuelEU in particular is very much about developing a technology neutral framework where operators, industry, investment is made in those technologies which are most adequate for specific business cases. And when I mention business cases, I mention ship types, operating profiles, geographies, deep sea, short sea shipping. We understand existing ships versus new ships. So the investment ecosystem for different companies is so different in shipping. And we believe that fuel EU essential matrix is technology neutral despite some promotion for renewable and low-carbon fuels of green synthetic nature, shore power, wind assisted propulsion, but yeah, it's non-prescriptive, non-technology specific regulation.

Brad Cox (06:44.903)
Francesco, Stamatis mentioned wind assisted and I saw you nodding. So Francesco, how do you see FuelEU impacting Scorpio Ship Management? With less than 300 days to go, how is Scorpio preparing for it?

Francesco Bellusci (06:58.997)
It will be certainly a big challenge, a big burden, and an administrative burden. We will become all carbon traders. But I must congratulate to those which introduced the approach because the Key Performance Indicator used to judge the emission impact of vessels is certainly very simple and very effective. The approach of considering well-to-wake is comprehensive. Up to now we were talking about tank-to-wake. Certainly this was disregarding the impact of the fuel production. And so I must say that the technical approach is extremely good. In the question there is however one sort of intrinsic problem, the impact to the ship owners. 

Unfortunately, is impacting more the ship managers. This is a contradiction, but I'm sure that going forward, the approach will be self-tuned and the final result will be great. 

You mentioned wind-assisted propulsion. It's great. We are looking at almost every solution, including wind-assisted propulsion. At Scorpio, we are involved in deep-sea, ocean-going vessels. An indicator which we have built up internally to judge how much any technology is applicable to our particular sector or not, we built up a sort of simple metric. It’s necessary to have low dead weight vessel with ample surface on deck in order to get the real benefit of wind-assisted propulsion. If we remember well, the last wind-propelled commercial vessels, tjeu had a dead weight not exceeding 3000 tons; the ratio between the wind sail and the dead weight of the ship, it's indicating whether the result considering  the saving, the investment,  the pay off period,  will be convenient or not for a certain particular ship type. But certainly, like production of electricity with the wind turbines, wind is free of charge, so whenever there is the opportunity of making good use of wind, we must do it.

Brad Cox (09:39.636)
Right, I think that segues nicely into this. So, you know, wind-assisted propulsion obviously is a topic. I understand that there are big incentives for this in the first 10 years of FuelEU. What is the state of this technology? Is it a near-term thing that's going to blossom in the next 10 years? And maybe the kind of a second question for Ricardo, do you see wind propulsion still being a factor for FuelEU beyond those 10 years as emissions targets get more restrictive?

Francesco Bellusci (10:11.114)
The technology is mature, I think so. Technology from different sectors — Formula One, America's Cup — has been withdrawn and applied to wind propulsion for commercial ships.

The technological solutions are quite advanced. Certainly there are two factors, one is the capital cost and the second one is the real impact that wind propulsion can have on your total propulsion. And as we discussed before, this is very much linked with the deadweight of the ship.

On bigger ship you will not really notice saving or at least the percentage of saving is so small that possibly the capital cost is not reasonable. This is the reason why the incentive, which will be put on place by regulator and legislator, is welcome for reducing CO2 production.

Ricardo Batista (11:12.038)
Yeah, I have to agree that technology is indeed developing and albeit rotating sails, suction rigid sails or rigid sails and depending on the ship types, on the operating profiles, as Francesco says, there will be one, two or other option that will become technically and operationally feasible.

In the FuelEU, we have managed to introduce a reward for operators making use for this technology based on the installed wind power, not based on the energy used for propulsion, remarkably because no verifiable method would be of assistance to ensure that the use of energy from wind could be computed in the calculation of the greenhouse gas intensity of the energy used.

Having said that, we consider that rewarding for the installed power instead of rewarding for the effective energy used is only an interim measure because I believe there is currently work being undertaken on wind-assisted propulsion that will at some point allow to have a verifiable method to compute energy directly used from wind into propulsion and that will potentially bring a disruptive integration of wind-assisted propulsion into FuelEU in the future, in future revisions of the regulation. 

We understand that this reward is important in view of the capital investment needed in these systems and I believe that, as Francesco said, any support to operators willing to install these systems is at this point more than justified. 

Brad Cox (13:00.253)
One more point on the technology side. My understanding is carbon capture isn't currently included in the FuelEU. Ricardo, could we expect the EU to look at including carbon capture in the future?

Ricardo Batista (13:13.878)
Thanks Brad. Carbon capture is one of the elements that for the moment was not integrated into the FuelEU Maritime. The reason being that FuelEU Maritime is designed to promote use of renewable low-carbon fuels instead of creating conditions for conventional fossil fuels to continue being used on board.

Having said that, this rationale starts not being strong enough in the future as we start using biogenic and synthetic green fuels, which carbon we really want to capture in order to recycle it. So gradually as the penetration of biogenic and synthetic green fuels starts to increase the use of carbon capture systems is also remarkably positive and allows recycling of this important carbon, which will in the end become an asset also in the future and feedstock to produce other fuels. 

How is the regulatory framework today and will be in the future for carbon capture on board? Today under ETS, you can already get credit for carbon capture on board ships.

In FuelEU, we have to do a report by the end of 2027, which will be the basis of the revision of FuelEU. And then there will be cyclic revision of the regulation where we intend to look at onboard carbon capture and storage, following the logic that I presented that is certifiable, verifiable technology that can be used to support also use of renewable and low-carbon fuels through capturing carbon that can be later on recycled in a context of circularity.

Brad Cox (14:59.586)
Francesco, what's your take on carbon capture not being factored at the moment? Is it something Scorpio ship management had been looking at or involved in at all?

Francesco Bellusci (15:10.627)
As said, we are looking at everything, including carbon capture on board. I fully agree with Ricardo on what I consider as well the right approach. We risk that carbon capture is a sort of change for not changing anything and for continuing to support the fossil fuel industry. It's a matter of fact, however, that the majority of so-called neutral impact fuel, e-fuel will need carbon available for their production.

The suggestion is to capture the carbon ashore, do not install complex and very challenging equipment on board, which will risk to end up like vapor recovery system. It's almost 30 years that we are installing a vapor recovery system on board, but the reception facility ashore do not exist or are used in extremely limited cases.  The same thing was for reception facility ashore although this is not the case anymore, but years ago, there was no reception for sludge, bilge water, and whatever. But the regulation for the ship was enforced quite earlier. 

With carbon capture we risk that owners will positively install the system on board. And after that, they cannot use it because there is not enough number of reception facility. And on top of this, we start to see already a lot of challenges on CO2 trading.

I think that carbon capture is something that can and must be done, because we will need carbon for e-fuel production. Normally, from a ship owner's side, we are against transforming a ship into a chemical laboratory. So I'm not really supportive for carbon capture on board.

Stamatis Fradelos (17:11.840)
Just one note on this, because I think both Francesco and Ricardo mentioned this lack of the infrastructure. This is very important. Also, the verifiable method for monitoring and accounting of the captured carbon. I mean, this is very important because we have a lack of regulatory regime in this area about how we will have, let's say, a specific method that we will be able to count and properly report this carbon capture on board and how this amount will be certified in order for this CO2 to be reduced from the ship emissions. 

So we have also a problem with the infrastructure, which is going to receive this amount of CO2, but also we need a very robust framework to make sure that we accurately account this quantity that is being delivered from the ship to the shore.

Ricardo Batista (18:18.241)
I would like even to add if I may, Brad, that Stamatis summed the key challenges. The challenge of certification is one which is not exclusive of carbon capture. It's also certification of renewable and low-carbon fuels. Because now, also for the first time, it’s not going to be compliance by looking at the molecules that are used on board. We need to be reassured these fuels were produced in a sustainable and certifiable way. And within this, there's transparency throughout the whole chain that needs to be ensured in order for trust — a chain of trusts to be built between the operators. So the challenge of onboard carbon capture in terms of certifying and verifying that actually carbon has been captured, delivered, and it will be sequestrated for long term or recycled, is a reverse challenge to the other one, which is ensuring that the incoming certificates onto the ship reflect the adequate sustainability characteristics of the fuels. Everything we're talking about now on FuelEU basis is also being replicated at IMO in the context of the LCA guidelines. Since MEPC 81, the steps that have been developed towards the further development of the LCA guidelines framework is very important. And the onboard carbon capture has been assigned to a correspondence group which will further develop this framework into the LCA guidelines. I always like to leave this step towards the IMO because all the discussion we have on FuelEU  basis is now being further elaborated, I would even say to a higher level of complexity and substantiality. 

Brad Cox (20:04.498)
Right. And I'd like to circle back on the IMO here in a second, but first, I wanted to kind of get into the pooling of trading of a trading surplus emissions. You know, that's something I find pretty interesting about FuelEU. Ricardo, how successful do you think this, this pooling function, uh, will be towards incentivizing, you know, a lot of what FuelEU is aiming to achieve?

Ricardo Batista (20:25.639)
Pooling is one of the flexibility mechanisms in FuelEU, allowing companies to pool ships and to attain compliance through pooling of the different ships in one group. This flexibility measure in particular, and let's focus on this one, is designed to reward overachievers that are able to already from day one of FuelEU start designing compliance options which take them further, take them beyond the target for one specific year. Going beyond means they will get more surplus or compliance surplus for their reporting periods. With this compliance surplus, one company can either pool ships within its own company or with ships from other companies. And this is not explicit in FuelEU, but of course these compliance surpluses between companies will be exchanged or agreed for pooling. There will be a reward for companies to those that have availability of this compliance, and there will be naturally a push to further ambition from different companies to be able to generate this which, in the end of the day, will be a tangible revenue or can be transformed into a tangible revenue if applied through pooling. 

Having said that, pooling brings challenges. One is that the agreement for pooling needs to be done between the companies through private agreements. This sets the challenge of agreeing on the rules and protocols for these private agreements. It comes with a challenge that the FuelEU database will need to receive the final formation for the pooling between the 30th of March and the 30th of April of the verification period, which means there’s a month for companies to agree or to confirm the pooling and for the verifier to take it forward. There is one verifier per ship, but then one of the verifiers will be elected as the verifier for the pool. And all these are unexperimented concepts. We are talking about something that will start to operate and it’s something that we are developing, of course, the IT facility to do this on the FuelEU database compliance side. But, from the bilateral exchanges we have with operators and associations, we know companies are also preparing on their side to put this into practice. How? Some of them already developing specific ship projects and energy transition projects which already include higher ambition on green fuel usage to generate already revenues from possible pooling. This is an important avenue for generating already revenues from compliance with FuelEU. Of course you can say larger companies are better equipped to take already this type of investment. But I believe that by doing that, we start to create the market for these fuels. Then we start to give the first steps to have fuel suppliers getting a perception that there is a business case to start producing these renewable fuels for shipping. 

Brad Cox (23:40.222)
Now, Francesco, I know you said Scorpio Ship Management's looking at everything. Is this pooling function something you guys are particularly interested in?

Francesco Bellusci (23:50.401)
By definition, Scorpio is the manager of a lot of pools of vessels. So in theory, we should be extremely supportive of pooling. In practice, I have a lot of concern. I think mainly because the definition of pooling, how it works, is not clear. And so a lot of questions rise up.

To follow up on what Ricardo said, I think that in a better world, there could be a different way of over-rewarding the over-achiever rather than diluting the effect with a pooling mechanism. With the investment of an owner, we are allowing other vessels which have not invested to be compliant while possibly those vessels should have been put under pressure in order to invest toward compliance.  Pooling amongst which entity? Amongst vessels owned by the same ship owner? Certainly this is the most reasonable and simpler way, but pooling amongst entities whose definition is not so clear, introduces a certain challenge and risk. One of the risks is that we create a sort of carbon smuggling market. And in certain cases the final result is that we will do this on the health of the planet. I understand that this is a way to make the passage a bit softer and this is welcome, but I see a lot of challenges, a lot of concern, a lot of risk that the pooling mechanism at the end will dilute the effort and will create problems.

Ricardo Batista (25:47.464)
I am obliged to come to the stage to defend pooling because I think everything Francesco said, I am called for action to revert. I think Francesco is sitting in a very complex role in the compliance with FuelEU.

Francesco is sitting as a ship management company taking ISM compliance duties and being called to manage compliance of the ship in context of different regulatory frameworks in view of his obligations towards the ISM code. FuelEU Maritime brings him one completely new obligation, which is in case the ships need to pay to comply — penalties, this is the first time he's seen with a challenge of managing high volume or high amounts of money that needs to flow towards payments of penalties, something that is not for sure he is used to manage and this is a market-based measure embedded into FuelEU and Francesco asks, “Why should I be now called to operate as if I was the ship owner? The ship owner or the charters should take their responsibility. One decides on the energy system, the other decides on the fuel to use. Why should the ship manager be the regulated or obligated party under FuelEU?” I fully understand the concerns that stem now from Francesco and colleagues up working in ship management companies. 

Having said that, not only in this topic but on others, there is a new ecosystem, a new environment being developed, which needs to be developed of course with the efforts of all. But here, Francesco will have an instrument to help him in his role in the future in ship managing and in operating as an ISM company. He will have to rely on contractual provisions prescribing very clearly the entitlements, obligations and liabilities of the different parties. What we see today, of course, is the need to embed in existing contract templates adequate provisions that clarify that Francesco is not the last person to respond towards the payment of a penalty. And he's also not the person to respond towards the decision of operators to use fuel A, B, C or D depending on the operational activity of the ship. But FuelEU needs a prima facie. FuelEU needs a responsible entity for the compliance of the ship. In ETS this is a completely different framework. In FuelEU we are talking about a ship-specific technical measure as Stamatis indicated in the beginning. And it's the obligation of the Commission to help, through the companies or engaging with associations. We do it with BIMCO, we are doing it with InterManager, we're doing it with relevant companies which we call to have meetings with and that we together discuss on solutions for this. Because the role of Francesco as a ship management company, also the role of ABS operating as a verifier, also in my opinion, together with the industry and operators, the main roles in compliance with FuelEU. One is the pivotal regulated entity working and passing compliance and ensuring entitlements with all the involved parties. And then the verifier, which in the end needs to be reassured and needs to be the doctor in the end that calculates and provides reassurance of compliance with the FuelEU framework. 

So both Francesco and Stamatis are in different sides of the playing field, or should I say better, in the same line of the value chain, but in different points of the compliance. And the smuggling, maybe we can have a coffee at some point and discuss about the smuggling, but I believe we see little risk of this type of scenarios occurring, but of course, as I said in the beginning, we are in a pilot phase almost together with all stakeholders. There is a reason why we have 2% and 6% for the next 10 years, for 2025 and 2020 and 2030, is that it's a phasing period and it's a period where we want to test more the concept than implicitly burden operators with high burden of compliance

Brad Cox (30:16.846)
Of course the IMO intends to set similar goals. And I know that, that in some ways, FuelEU is sort of a step one in all of this. Stamatis, do you think the global industry is fully aware of the implications of this approach?

Stamatis Fradelos (30:33.759)
As previously mentioned by Ricardo, IMO is moving forward with a similar technical measure, the GHG Fuel Standard. I'm sure IMO is looking at and receiving a lot of input and feedback from the European Commission while developing this GHG Fuel Standard. But of course as an industry we have an understanding on the impact but of course we need actually to see the first years of implementation to really understand the potential impact and this is good. We're going to see at least the FuelEU Maritime Regulation run for two years, because we expect the GFS to come into force by the end of 2027. So at least we will have two years experience to understand any issues and possibly be able to adjust the system as it's being developed to cope with these challenges and issues that we're going to face in these first years of implementation.

Brad Cox (31:46.850)
As we're getting near the end of our time here, I’d just like to get a little, some closing thoughts from, from each of you. Francesco, why don't you go first.

Francesco Bellusci (31:56.873)
I opened in saying that the FuelEU regulation is well done, at least as a principle. And the certification of this is that IMO is following. Certainly, the hope is that IMO will be a sort of phase two. It means even better than FuelEU using the experience of the implementation for a couple of years of FuelEU. So I'm very confident that there will be a sort of continuation between the two regulatory regimes and an amelioration as well. I think it’s very important, for the first time after several years, I am feeling the need of the support of classification societies in this challenging journey 

Number one, because the regulation is complex. Number two, because the implications are enormous. Number three, because we like or not, we need a verifier, we need a sort of certification and I think that all these discussions are fostering and showing how cooperation and interaction with the classification society, but as well with the legislator and regulator, is necessary. I'm seeing a lot of fantastic discussions going on between all the stakeholders and particularly the ones that are on the front line, and this is extremely good for shipping. This challenge at the end will be an incredible opportunity for showing how important is shipping, how important are the various stakeholders and how important is that we continue to work together.

Brad Cox (33:48.163)
And Ricardo, how about you?

Ricardo Batista (33:50.356)
Thank you. Two things. I will not make use of the closing thoughts for any political statement. I will just leave two. One is to thank ABS for organizing this podcast. I think it's an excellent way of communicating and exchanging thoughts between colleagues and really definitely a fantastic formula. 

And second, to leave you practical information. Very soon in DG-MOVE website on the section for maritime transport we will have the FAQ for FuelEU, which will help with a number of questions that we raised already today. We will have a batch one and two of questions which will then be upgraded with more questions as they come and as we consider them eligible for this FAQ. At the same time we have a helpdesk: fitfor55@emsa.europa.eu. I repeat fitfor55@emsa.europa.eu, which is managed by EMSA. A helpdesk to deal with questions of any nature on FuelEU — technical, procedural, with respect to implementation of the regulation. And finally, we are involved in the drafting of 14 secondary legislation elements regulating and dictating how the protocol for exchange in communication on OPS, monitoring reporting and verification rules for fuel use specifically and other aspects of the regulation which require our attention currently for successful rollout of the implementation of the regulations.

We have also the European Sustainable Shipping Forum, which continues to assist in more technical aspects of FuelEU, including other aspects. And we have the Renewable and Low Carbon Fuel Alliance, an industry alliance of more than 250 members already, dealing with the necessary promotion and uptake of renewable and low carbon fuels for aviation and maritime. 
Aviation has specific needs, maritime, a wider range of options, but this industrial alliance in Europe is bringing stakeholders from many sides of the fuel supply value chain and working together to optimize availability and scalability of renewable and low carbon fuels. So, practical information only on my side and thank you very much again.

Brad Cox (36:17.957)
And Stamatis?

Stamatis Fradelos (36:19.288)
Yes, thank you, Brad. I fully agree that this is a complex regulatory regime and we see developments from different parts of the world, globally from IMO but also regional. So for us, it is important to continue the dialogue between the different stakeholders. We need collaboration. We need to work together in order to be able to safely deliver this decarbonisation journey because we need to have always in mind safety and all these new fuels or these technologies may produce some risk and we need to consider and address this risk.

We will continue working with the legislators to understand the requirements as those are developing and provide our input. Especially for us, we are working closely with operators and we can understand, we have an understanding on the impact of this regulation

We're trying to be well informed. So we have started the engagement with the regulators. As these regulations are being developed in Brussels, and of course, we are doing the same for IMO. And once we have the information, of course, we try to pass this to our clients, to our customers, because we believe the most important part for them to decide their strategy is to be well informed.

We have publications. We summarize because we understand it is difficult for operators to go through all these papers, the legislation. So we produce some regulatory news or briefs, which actually provide a summary of the requirements. And we have some webinars or like the podcast we have today.

Brad Cox (38:18.621)
Okay, gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. You know, special thanks to Scorpio Ship Management and the European Commission for being a part of this. 

Ricardo Batista (38:27.548)
Thank you.

Francesco Bellusci (38:28.174)
Thank you.

Stamatis Fradelos (38:28.644)
Thank you, Brad.

Brad Cox (38:29.584)
For the listeners at home, on the road, or on a ship — whever you are — if you like what we’re doing. Let us know. Leave a review, comment on our social media channels or send us an email at podcast@eagle.org. Be sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast platform to catch new episodes as soon as they’re available. To learn more about FuelEU and other regulations impacting the industry, visit us at www.eagle.org. Thank you for listening.