Maritime Coalition Targets 20% Electrification of Shipping by 2035

Shipping would need roughly 556 terawatt-hours of electricity annually — more than a full year of France's national power consumption — under a voluntary target launched at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, where more than 30 maritime organisations agreed to push for electricity to supply at least 20% of international shipping's energy by 2035.

The Maritime Electrification Breakthrough Goal, launched yesterday by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and RMI, counts the Port of Long Beach, the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA) and the Maritime Battery Forum among its backers. That support base spans ports, cargo owners and battery-sector specialists — but no binding commitments attach to any of them.

How big is the energy ask?

The coalition puts the 20% target at approximately two exajoules, or 556 TWh, of electricity per year. To put that in perspective: it exceeds the annual electricity consumption of France, one of the world's largest advanced economies. Delivering it would require enormous investment in power generation, port-side grid infrastructure and charging facilities — capacity that, on the coalition's own framing, does not yet exist at anything close to that scale.

The claim rests on some genuinely encouraging numbers. More than 1,600 electric and hybrid vessels already operate worldwide, according to Maritime Battery Forum figures cited by the initiative. Research highlighted at the launch suggests vessel segments representing around 30% of maritime energy consumption could be technically electrified by 2030 — and that electrification could be economically attractive for 90% of that technically suitable fleet.

Read that carefully. The 90% figure covers economics only within the 30% of energy consumption deemed technically electrifiable. It is not a claim that nine in ten ships will switch, nor that the remaining 70% of the sector's energy demand has any near-term electric pathway at all. Deep-sea container shipping — the segment that dominates bunker fuel demand — sits largely outside the electrifiable envelope on current battery technology.

What is the coalition actually asking for?

The initiative's demands fall into two camps:

• Investment: greater spending on port electricity infrastructure, power grids and renewable generation.
• Regulation: stronger incentives from the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Both, notably, are calls on parties other than the signatories themselves. The target remains voluntary, and delivery depends on coordinated investment by shipowners, ports, utilities and governments — a chain of actors with divergent commercial incentives and no enforcement mechanism behind the pledge.

For shipowners, the commercial consequence is a widening gap between segments. Short-sea, ferry and port-vessel operators face plausible economics for battery power within this decade; operators of long-haul tonnage face continued exposure to whatever fuel levy or standard the IMO ultimately adopts. For ports, the ask implies capital expenditure on shore power and grid connections well beyond current retrofit programmes. For forwarders and cargo owners, ZEMBA's involvement signals continued demand for zero-emission freight procurement — at a premium, and in limited volume.

Why the timing matters

The launch is not accidental. COP31's wider ambition is to lift electricity's share of global final energy demand to 35% by 2035, and shipping electrification is positioned as a component of that goal.

The sharper deadline sits with the IMO. Negotiations over the organisation's proposed Net-Zero Framework resume in London on November 23, and the coalition's intervention is clearly designed to shape the ambition level of those talks. If the IMO adopts measures that reward electric operation — through carbon-intensity scoring or port-fee structures — the voluntary target gains a regulatory tailwind. If the November round stalls, the 2035 goal remains a press release with a French-sized power bill attached.

The coalition has pledged ambition; the numbers to watch are whether IMO negotiators attach money and mandates to it later this month.