Creating practical, investable and safe pathways to maritime decarbonisation
The Lloyd’s Register Maritime Decarbonisation Hub (The Decarb Hub) is an independent, not-for-profit system intervention platform established through a partnership between Lloyd’s Register Foundation and Lloyd’s Register Group.
- Our vision is a decarbonised shipping industry, with human safety and sustainability at its core.
- Our mission is to accelerate the sector’s transition through coalitions, research, and systems-focused programmes that enable the adoption of zero emission fuels and build resilient maritime pathways.
In July 2025, we published our Theory of Change to define how we deliver our mission. It is our living strategy. In Year 5, we focused on three connected challenges: making zero-emission fuel pathways more investable, improving safety and workforce readiness, and accelerating emissions reductions from the existing fleet. Our work helped make maritime decarbonisation more practical, more investable and safer to deliver. By strengthening the conditions for fuel transition, workforce readiness and fleet efficiency, it turned system-wide ambition into clearer pathways for action. This built on the foundation established in Year 4, where The Decarb Hub delivered 15 major initiatives across fuel adoption, risk and safety, and stakeholder impact aimed at turning ambition into measurable progress.
Key Highlights
Maritime fuel transition: from corridor design to capital deployment
In Year 5, progress on maritime fuel transition became more tangible. The sector moved closer to a point where decisions about zero-emission fuels can be made with greater confidence, because the conversation is now less about abstract ambition and more about viable pathways for action. This matters because the transition will only accelerate when shipowners, ports, fuel suppliers and financiers can see credible routes to deployment and understand where risk can be shared or reduced.
Our work helped strengthen those conditions:
- In Singapore, one of the world’s most important maritime hubs, stakeholders now have a clearer basis for assessing retrofit pathways for methanol and ammonia.
- Across the wider system, there is also stronger recognition that capital will not flow at the scale required unless financing approaches evolve alongside technology and market demand.
By helping connect these pieces, we contributed to a shift from fragmented interest towards a more investable transition environment.
Safer systems, protected people: from risk assessment to safe usability standards
In Year 5, the transition to alternative fuels became safer in practical terms, not just in principle. The sector is beginning to define more clearly what safe adoption looks like for the people who will operate, manage and work around new fuel systems every day. This matters because decarbonisation will not succeed if safety is treated as a technical add-on rather than a condition of deployment.
Our work contributed to that shared foundation:
- Expectations around training and competency for ammonia, methanol and hydrogen are now better articulated.
- Ammonia in particular has a stronger emerging basis for safe use across shipboard and shoreside settings.
The significance of this is wider than workforce preparation alone: it helps build confidence across the whole system, supports regulatory readiness, and reduces one of the key barriers to adoption.
Maritime emissions efficiency acceleration: from trials to fleet wide efficiency enablement
In Year 5, progress on fleet efficiency moved closer to practical uptake. The conversation around emissions reduction from the existing fleet is increasingly grounded in evidence about what works, under which conditions, and with what potential for scale. This matters because meaningful emissions reductions are also needed from ships already in operation, and those reductions depend on solutions that owners and operators trust enough to adopt.
Our work helped create stronger foundations for that trust. Through MERC, collaborative trials and shared evidence generation began to turn individual innovations into a more credible pathway for broader sector adoption.
That is important because fleet-wide change happens when evidence is robust enough to support operational decisions, investment choices and wider market confidence.
Partnerships for Impact
Our most significant outcomes are achieved through collaboration and our partnerships-for-impact approach amplifies the reach, credibility, and effectiveness of our work while preserving our independence.
We are deeply grateful for the support of our funders and partners including industry leaders, regulators, financiers, ports, multilateral bodies, technical experts, and civil society organisations, with whom we create the conditions for collective action.
Together, we help create a maritime transition that is not only technically possible, but practical to deliver, safer for people, and more credible to scale.
Looking Ahead
In Year 6, the Decarb Hub is set to:
- Advance green-corridor implementation and low-carbon fuel investment pathways
- Strengthen human safety, competency and training frameworks for alternative fuels
- Accelerate adoption of proven fleet-efficiency solutions through MERC
- Develop practical sustainable-finance approaches to unlock maritime decarbonisation investment
- Improve impact measurement and expand emissions transparency across operations.