Johannes Schürmann, commercial director at Finco Energies, a physical biofuel supplier, said that significant demand for biofuels has been seen due to the implementation of FuelEU Maritime, which started in 2025.

Speaking at DNV’s Maritime Energy Transition Summit 2025, he said that this is due to their availability and because many biofuel types have a potential dropping capability onboard conventional ships designed for fuel oil.

“We (are seeing) many different smaller and bigger shipping companies that want to comply with FuelEU and see biofuel as one of the potential options to comply,” Schürmann said during the summit.

“On the legislative side, not much will change in the coming five years. Today, we have ETS and FuelEU coming from the European Commission. The target of remains 2 percent until 2029,” he added.

“ETS cost will go up a bit for shipping companies, meaning that the spread between bio and fossil is getting slightly smaller, but it is not enough to cover the gap. From the legislative side, from Europe, I don’t think there will be much more push.”

Schürmann said that when it comes to IMO, there are multiple questions needing to be answered to understand whether there will be a legislative push, and the voluntary market also needs to be considered.

“The big questions then are: What are the rules of those voluntary markets? May you use the biofuels that you needed for the mandatory market? May you use that as well for the voluntary market?” he said. “That concept is called additionality … If you want to sell emission reductions in the voluntary market, they need to be additional on things that would happen anyway.”

Schürmann added that if the shipping industry will follow these additionality requirements, the voluntary market can be a massive driver for the increase in sustainable fuels and shipping.

“However, the rules are not yet accepted by all shipping companies. They are not harmonized among all the other shipping companies using green fuels,” he noted.