In an industry where the rulebook is in flux, response to uncertainty rather than to specific risk events will determine transition outcomes.
In late 2025, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) deferred the decision to adopt the Net Zero Framework (NZF). Post ISWG 21 and MEPC 84, the NZF architecture (including a greenhouse gas fuel standard, a pricing mechanism and a fund) remains the basis for ongoing negotiation, though revisions to build consensus are expected. The alternative proposals submitted alongside it have not gathered the support to displace the NZF. Talks will resume later this year, with any measures likely to take effect only towards the end of the decade.
Regional emissions regulations have already been implemented or will come into force shortly and will likely take several years to align with the final IMO framework. Any resulting complexity is likely to persist for the next decade due to regulatory timelines, increasing stranded asset risk and potential losses – unless we build the systems to prevent it.
The cost of waiting for clarity
When faced with regulatory uncertainty, the instinct is to pause and wait for clarity or sharpen focus on existing ideas. In the case of maritime decarbonisation, both approaches may accumulate risk.
Waiting leaves organisations unprepared. Accelerating climate change and approaching environmental tipping points won’t pause for regulatory alignment. Operators in regions with forward-looking environmental regulations face unavoidable carbon costs and difficulty accessing finance if they don’t act. Waiting also means losing time and missing opportunities to build the businesses and infrastructure of the future.
Hyper-focus on a narrow set of solutions also carries risk. Over-reliance on transition fuels or single-pathway strategies would lead to high sunk costs in assets and infrastructure that may not align with eventual, strengthened regulatory requirements.
Knowing what we are exposed to
Most risks we are exposed to today can be mapped against two axes: probability (how likely they are), and magnitude of impact (how large their impact would be when they occur). Most of what our industry faces today sits in the high-likelihood bucket and is no surprise at all. Decarbonisation will be required; its timing and form are open. Lifecycle emissions analyses for different fuels will continue to evolve and defaults may be different from real-world values. Operating economics of alternative-fuel vessels are knowable in principle but will not be clear until first-generation systems run commercially across enough routes. The time lapse between the first-generation and commercially optimal nth generation systems depends on several macroeconomic factors including decarbonisation across adjacent industries. We know that early commercial adopters will reveal these answers; we don’t know what they’ll find. These are the risks where the damage comes from delayed action and the wait for definitive clarity.
Other risks are high impact yet genuinely hard to predict (Taleb’s black swans), visible only in hindsight, where no amount of forecasting helps and the only defence is a system built to absorb them. And some events begin small: a single safety incident in an early fuel trial could move insurance, regulation and investor confidence far beyond the vessel involved, taking a whole pathway’s commercial case with it.
There are some situations we think we understand but find we don’t when they manifest. We know that technologies proven on land require adaptation for shipboard use. What we consistently underestimate is how maritime-specific constraints cascade into unexpected challenges. Saltwater corrosion, space limitations, vibration, and safety requirements don’t just require adaptation; they often force fundamental redesigns that ripple through vessel economics and operations in ways that land-based experience may not predict.
A systematic risk mapping exercise can help prioritise mitigation efforts, but might overlook low probability events with outsized, long-term repercussions. The only way forward is to build a system or an organisation that can withstand, push through and ultimately gain from different types of shocks.
Building the capacity to respond
Going from a vulnerable system or organisation to an ‘antifragile’ (Taleb’s term from his 2012 book of the same name) one that is strengthened by disruption requires building three types of capabilities, calibrated to an organisation’s scale and operational breadth:
Scenario planning: Preparing an organisation to operate across several plausible futures rather than forecasting one or two and committing to them. The purpose is preparation rather than prediction.
Designed redundancy: Decades of optimisation have made shipping highly efficient. Lean operations and tightly coupled chains leave no buffer when one link fails, as the disruptions of recent years have repeatedly shown. The answer is not to abandon efficiency but to treat slack as a deliberate asset. A buffer brings incremental, continuous cost but prevents losses that can be severe and sometimes irreversible. This asymmetry justifies deliberate redundancy on its own. And disruptions we consider rare are arriving more often than our planning assumes, only sharpening the case.
Responsiveness: The ability to respond as events unfold, supported by decision triggers set in advance, transforms a scramble into a considered response. At what fuel-price differential might switching make sense? What level of bunkering availability would justify committing to a particular fuel?
What this looks like in practice
These examples illustrate how the lens applies across the value chain; other actors face comparable challenges.
Shipowners face the largest capital decisions and the longest payback windows. Aligning vessel specifications with the decarbonisation pathways available in the primary operating regions can help avoid betting on uniform global alternative-fuel adoption. Leaving room in charter parties, supply agreements and financing structures to accommodate fuel switching and technology upgrades allows for flexibility and experimentation. Treating pilots as learning events and gathering real performance data on multiple options allows scaling of fit-for-purpose solutions. Measuring rigorously and linking operational data to pre-established decision frameworks can surface emerging opportunities.
Ports can map market signals and act as demand aggregators for emerging fuels and technologies. By tracking which lines order which fuels and where peer ports are committing, they can phase in modular, multi-fuel investment rather than placing a single early bet. Ports are also ideally placed to serve as testbeds, de-risking new solutions through pilots and partnerships.
Financiers can create future opportunities by providing guidance to fuel and technology developers on what data, partnerships, offtake agreements, or risk mitigations would make projects financeable. Articulating the role of different funding types and efficient capital stack structure can benefit actors across the value chain. Staging capital injection into emerging pathways with defined review points can keep positions adjustable as evidence accumulates. Deploying blended finance and patient-capital structures could support higher-upside bets that, by definition, lack years of data.
The path forward
We cannot let the pursuit of perfect solutions prevent practical action today. Early learning comes from imperfect systems; optimisation can only follow deployment. We should pilot at whatever scale is feasible, measure rigorously and let the data drive what scales next. Regulatory delay on the NZF has handed the industry time. The question is whether we use it to build the capacity to act under uncertainty or spend it waiting for a certainty that is unlikely to arrive in the short term. Resilience is a waypoint. The goal worth steering towards lies beyond it, in organisations and systems that gain from disruptions.
First appeared in the July 2026 edition of Shipping Network, the magazine of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers.