21 JAN 2026
A quiet but decisive shift is taking place in the race to decarbonise global shipping, and it is unfolding not in Asia’s massive shipyards or the traditional oil hubs of the Middle East, but across four European nations that have moved with unusual speed to build the infrastructure that could define maritime energy in the coming decades.
Spain, Denmark, Norway and France have emerged as the key frontrunners in developing production capacity for green hydrogen and synthetic fuels that deep-sea vessels will need if the industry is to meet its 2030 and 2050 climate targets, according to Transport & Environment’s latest update to its shipping e-fuels observatory.
The research maps 80 confirmed or announced green hydrogen, e-methanol, e-ammonia and e-methane projects across Europe that could together produce up to 3.6 million tonnes of oil equivalent of e-fuels by 2032, assuming all reach operation. While this is still a relatively modest volume compared with current marine fuel demand, what stands out is the concentration of that potential in a handful of countries, creating a new geography of marine energy that could reshape where the world’s shipping lines refuel within the next decade.
Denmark stands out with fourteen projects that together could produce about 3.6 million tonnes of oil equivalent a year, spanning green hydrogen and its derivatives across multiple end-use sectors. Spain follows as the second-largest potential producer, with eight projects accounting for about nine per cent of total European volumes, closely linked to the country’s emerging hydrogen valleys and to major ports such as Algeciras and Bilbao.
Norway and France have smaller absolute capacity in the overall pipeline, but a notably higher share of their planned output is explicitly targeting maritime use. A significant portion of national volumes is intended to supply shipping at least in part: 100 per cent in France, 63 per cent in Spain, 53 per cent in Norway and 42 per cent in Denmark.
When the analysis narrows to volumes primarily dedicated to shipping, the picture sharpens. Nearly a quarter of Norway’s projected output fits that category, largely in the form of e-ammonia designed from the outset for marine use. Spain and France each have up to about 1.1 million tonnes of oil equivalent per year of potential e-fuels that could flow into maritime bunkers if all relevant projects proceed, while Norway has around 0.13 million tonnes clearly targeting the sector. Denmark’s Kassø facility adds a further 0.02 million tonnes of oil equivalent dedicated to e-methanol, a portion of which is already being sold as ship fuel.
Denmark has already crossed a symbolic threshold that separates ambition from physical reality. The Kassø e-methanol plant, developed by European Energy and Mitsui and inaugurated in May 2025, is widely recognised as the world’s first large-scale commercial e-methanol facility. It has an annual production capacity of about 42,000 tonnes of e-methanol, powered by nearby renewable electricity and biogenic CO?, equivalent to roughly 20,000 tonnes of oil equivalent. Transport & Environment identifies Kassø as the largest European green e-fuel project dedicated to the maritime sector, with part of its output flowing directly to A. P. Moller-Maersk under offtake contracts for its dual-fuel containerships. In an industry that has spent decades discussing alternative fuels with relatively little hard infrastructure to point to, Kassø functions as proof of concept.
Behind this pioneering facility sits a wave of much larger national initiatives still working their way towards final investment decision. Denmark’s pipeline includes gigawatt-scale power-to-x schemes such as HØST PtX Esbjerg, which aims to use offshore wind and other renewables to produce around 100,000 to 140,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year, equivalent to more than 600,000 tonnes of green ammonia. Spain is pursuing a similarly strategic approach, linking e-fuel production to port-side infrastructure upgrades and regional industrial policy, while Norway’s focus on e-ammonia builds on its long experience in complex maritime operations. France’s smaller but highly focused portfolio reflects a deliberate policy choice to ensure that port decarbonisation and French-flag shipping are integral to the country’s wider hydrogen strategy.
For all the apparent momentum, Transport & Environment’s analysis is emphatic that the overall state of e-fuel development for shipping remains fragile. Less than five per cent of the identified capacity is linked to projects where shipping is the primary end-user, and only a handful of those have reached final investment decision or begun operation. Most schemes remain at planning or early development stages and are vulnerable to shifting economics, policy uncertainty and competition from other sectors for the same pools of green hydrogen and renewable power.
The European policy environment is therefore pivotal. Within the EU’s Fit for 55 packages, the FuelEU Maritime regulation requires ships calling at EU ports to reduce the greenhouse-gas intensity of their energy mix progressively, reaching an 80 per cent reduction compared with a fossil baseline by 2050. In November 2025 the European Commission’s Sustainable Transport Investment Plan confirmed that at least two billion euros in Invest-EU finance would be mobilised for sustainable alternative fuels, including green hydrogen-based fuels for aviation and maritime. Those signals have coincided with an uptick in project announcements, but for many developers the lack of long-term, shipping-specific offtake certainty is still a major barrier to reaching construction.
The climate stakes are significant. International shipping accounts for roughly three per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and in 2023 the International Maritime Organization adopted a revised greenhouse-gas strategy that calls for net-zero emissions from international shipping by or around 2050. For deep-sea trades that cannot realistically electrify because of energy-density and range constraints, e-methanol and e-ammonia produced from green hydrogen are widely regarded as among the few scalable options capable of delivering very low well-to-wake emissions. Yet these fuels are substantially more expensive than conventional heavy fuel oil and entail significant conversion losses. Without strong regulation, carbon pricing and targeted subsidies, they remain commercially unattractive for most operators.
The emerging leadership of Spain, Denmark, Norway and France therefore cuts both ways. On the one hand, it gives Europe a nucleus of industrial capability, port infrastructure and technical expertise that could anchor a genuinely global green fuels value chain for shipping. On the other hand, the work of Transport & Environment underlines how conditional that lead still is: a single operational, shipping-dedicated e-fuel plant in Kassø, a small cluster of other projects nearing completion, a much larger group still on drawing boards and a regulatory framework that does not yet send a strong enough demand signal to drag the majority of those projects over the investment line.
For shipowners and fuel suppliers trying to navigate the energy transition, the message is that the supply side of green marine fuels is beginning to coalesce in specific locations, but it will only mature if policy and market incentives align. For policymakers, the observatory functions as both a progress report and a warning against complacency. Without clearer and stronger demand signals in European and international regulation, many of the projects that currently place Spain, Denmark, Norway and France in the lead may never move beyond feasibility studies. The outlines of the infrastructure that could define maritime energy for decades are being sketched now in these four countries; whether they turn into steel and concrete in time to help deliver net-zero shipping will depend on decisions taken in the next few years about how serious Europe really is about forcing the pace of decarbonisation at sea.