Green Corridors Progressing

The 2024 edition of the Getting to Zero Coalition’s Annual Progress Report on Green Shipping Corridors finds that the movement has made healthy progress.

In the last year, 18 new green shipping corridor initiatives emerged worldwide, and two-fifths of existing initiatives advanced to a new phase of development.

At least six green corridor initiatives have moved towards enabling real-world implementation.

At the same time, the report warns that progress could stall without urgent action from governments to overcome a “feasibility wall.”

It states:

1. Timely, accessible public support to bridge the fuel cost gap must be the immediate priority for governments committed to making green corridors a success. Coalescing around green market-maker schemes, such as H2Global, may be the most cost-effective and timely option.

2. Stakeholders must take advantage of corridors as protected spaces for exploring innovative commercial arrangements. Given the challenging economics of zero-emission solutions, green corridor initiatives must put business-as-usual thinking aside and prioritize commercial innovation around fuel procurement and chartering/cargo.

3. Initiatives need to adopt a more flexible, programmatic approach to governance. By allowing for wider participation and a variety of collaborative mechanisms in fuel purchasing and chartering, these approaches may be better equipped to handle experimentation, achieve scale and share risks.

4. There is a need to explore what policies and sources of finance can support the realization of green corridors and zero-emission fuel supply chains in the Global South. Corridors based in the Global South, as well as those that intend to import fuel from the South, face specific challenges that will need to be addressed in a bespoke fashion. Closer engagement with multilateral development banks can help identify solutions.

5. Rallying behind the existing initiatives and leveraging the growing body of best practices may be the best strategy to maximize the potential of the global green corridor portfolio. The steadily growing number of initiatives shows that there is continued interest in establishing green corridors. However, given limited public and private resources and narrowing timelines, supporting existing efforts should be the main priority going forward.