Trends towards green shipping and green shipbuilding provide new market opportunities for the European shipbuilding and marine equipment sectors.
The maritime transport sector is being incentivised to improve its environmental performance as a result of both market driven and regulatory greening trends. Examples of these trends are global regulation on NOx and SO2 emissions of ships, increased energy efficiency of new ships, ballast water management and an increased demand for offshore renewable energy generation.
The European shipbuilding and marine equipment sectors have a leading position in high value, high complexity segments. It has a good starting position to contribute to the greening trends.
This study identifies market opportunities for the EU shipbuilding industry that follow from greening trends in shipping and other areas. Taking the greening together, the global market potential for the period until 2020 is estimated to be minimally € 12.5-15.5 bn per year.
The study recommends that the EU enhances its cluster support provision, continues the promotion of the shipbuilding and marine equipment sectors as attractive work places, continues promoting the use of market based instruments at IMO level and consider adopting schemes at EU level.
This report is built on an extensive market consultation process through in-depth interviews with over 35 stakeholders, complemented with a review of the state of the art literature and a stakeholder workshop. As such it is not a statistical analysis, or an academic or political analysis, but it represents an in-depth insight based on key market actors and industry players.