The race for green: What does a global sustainability push mean for India’s maritime sector?

In the maritime world, the transition to sustainable, zero-emission alternatives is a historic change led by mounting international pressure to eliminate the industry’s giant carbon footprint.

This transition was the central focus of multiple sessions of the international conference Swachh Sagar Suraksit Sansar—Clean Oceans for a Safe Earth, organised by the Society for Aerospace Maritime and Defence Studies (SAMDeS), in collaboration with the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Liechtenstein Institute for Strategic Development (LISD).

The event shed light on a critical reality—that green shipping adoption takes up less than a 40-45 per cent share in the global shipbuilding orderbook, as global maritime policies around sustainable shipping are still quite fragmented.

It is here that we see how the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has not just been issuing green compliance laws over the years, but also actively trying to unify various regional systems into one ecosystem: one common standard to oversee the transition.

According to Rear Admiral J.S. Mann from the Boston Consulting Group, the use of IMO standards—such as the Green Ship Standard—as a common factor among regional systems leads to reduced compliance cost, which is very important for better green adoption in the sector, and no duplicate audits as well.

In India’s case, as sessions by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) and Cochin Shipyard showed, combining high-tech deep-sea innovations for tomorrow with scalable domestic solutions for today plays a major role in the country’s own journey towards green shipping, backed by India’s larger goals under the Maritime India Vision 2030 and the Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.

GRSE Executive Director, Cmde Vinith Aerat, noted that in its case, this could be seen with not just direct moves towards green shipping, such as the development of scalable zero-emission electric ferries, but also with the GAINS 3.0 innovation platform aligned with the Make in India vision, greater adoption of AI and other tech in shipbuilding, and building research-oriented vessels.

“There is a lot for us to do in terms of shipbuilders, there is a lot for ship operators to do, a lot for fuel suppliers, regulators, financial institutions, governments—there is a lot of coordination which is required, and that is the ask of the hour,” he said at the conference.

Cochin Shipyard’s side of the dual-track push towards green shipping shows the hybrid electric catamaran used for the Kochi Water Metro—that will be rolled out for inland waterways in various parts of the country over the years—and India’s first hydrogen fuel cell vessel (FCV).

J.C. Gopinathan, General Manager, CSL, then points out how these were extrapolated for the shipyard’s upcoming projects, such as the zero-emission feeder container vessel backed by Enova Funding, and Service Operation Vessels (SOVs), which are used for offshore logistics and require specialised maritime expertise to make.

“Different types of fuels are going around, and as I said, owners, shipyards, designers—everybody is confused. But we feel it will stabilise once, and we'll reach the 2050 goal of net zero,” he pointed out at the conference.

On the underside of these technological milestones is the growing support of India’s maritime programmes, such as the Shipbuilding Financial Assistance Scheme (SBFAS), which subsidises the cost of going green for Indian shipbuilders, and the Shipbuilding Development Scheme (SDS), which aims to modernise the shipbuilding ecosystem itself.

In moving up the green transition ladder in line with India’s long-term maritime initiatives, the country is essentially ensuring its jump from a place of passively adapting to the IMO’s green norms to actively leading the pack.