GASNAM has presented the 2026 edition of the Observatory for the Decarbonization of Transport, prepared in collaboration with PwC, which analyzes the level of compliance that the Spanish maritime sector could achieve against the regulatory goals for 2030 and 2040. The report concludes that the transition is "formally achievable," although it will require, as stated in the document itself, "a very high investment effort and close coordination between shipowners and energy operators."
The study describes a regulatory framework of singular complexity, structured around the transposition of the RED III Directive and the FuelEU Maritime Regulation, to which is added the gradual entry of the sector into the European Union's emissions trading system (ETS), although the latter is beyond the scope of the analysis. RED III falls on the fuel supplier and applies to cabotage traffic, while FuelEU Maritime obligates the shipowner and operates over the entire fleet, requiring close synchronization between the supply of fuels and the rate of vessel renewal.
Regarding the starting point, the document recalls that around 80% of the world's goods are transported by sea and divides the Spanish sector into three segments: goods, passengers/ferries, and cruises. Freight transport accounts for the largest part of fuel consumption, while passengers and cruises have shown higher growth rates than GDP, with the Tangier-Algeciras connection among the most intense international routes and the lines to the Balearic Islands as the main benchmark for cabotage. In the allocation between the two types of navigation, the analysis attributes around 19% of the fuel supplied to freight transport to cabotage, 80% to ferries—due to the weight of island connections—and 20% to cruises.
Natural gas, in its fossil and renewable variants, appears as the central vector of the compliance pathway in the short and medium term. The document indicates that its consumption has quadrupled between 2023 and 2025 and doubled between 2024 and 2025, in line with the order book for dual-fuel vessels. In 2025, LNG and bioLNG consumption in Spanish ports is around 8 TWh, of which 12% corresponds to bioLNG.
In the projected scenario for 2030, the analysis calculates that the level of compliance would exceed the minimum requirements: against a target of a 6% reduction in emissions under FuelEU Maritime, the projection reaches 9.70%; against 10% of the RED III, 12.5%; and against 7% of minimum renewable penetration, 7.31%. The scenario supports this result due to the saturation of the limit of 1.7% allowed for biofuels in Annex IX part B and a still nascent incorporation of renewable methanol and ammonia, concentrated in vessels already prepared for these fuels.
By 2040, the framework tightens substantially—the targets rise to 31% under FuelEU Maritime, 31.5% under RED III, and 20% of renewable penetration—and the report projects that the compliance scenario would exceed these, at 35.41%, 32.78%, and 24.63% respectively. The document warns, however, that the rate of renewal of the cabotage fleet towards natural gas may not be sufficient to absorb this effort on its own, so it considers biofuels from Annex IX part A—despite not being cost-competitive in that horizon—and a growing role for renewable ammonia, which the study predicts will be the most prominent vector by 2040 and 2050 as it does not require biogenic CO₂ in its production, unlike renewable methanol.
The report also quantifies a compliance cost over a scenario of continuity of the current mix, which is more pronounced in 2040 than in 2030, because lower carbon footprint alternatives continue to be more expensive than conventional fuels even when incorporating the cost of CO₂ emissions.
Among the identified risks, the document points to the possible displacement of international maritime traffic towards non-EU ports not subject to the same regulatory demands, especially in transshipment traffic and on routes with alternative stops in North Africa or the eastern Mediterranean, with the consequent impact on the competitiveness of the Spanish and European port system. The study also captures the position of sector operators, who demand that the design of penalties for non-compliance maintain a predictable price signal and that the revenues derived from these mechanisms be reinvested in the decarbonization of the sector.
In the industrial realm, the report attributes to Spain a competitive advantage due to its regasification capacity, the largest in Europe, and its port network, capable of receiving, storing, and redistributing natural gas and, in the medium term, converting to multimolecular infrastructures capable of channeling renewable ammonia. The document recalls that the average lifespan of a vessel is about 20 years and that the time between the decision to acquire it and its entry into service is three to five years, which gives the investment decisions of the coming years a decisive weight on the achievement of the objectives for 2040 and 2050.
GASNAM presents the Observatory as a tool for ongoing monitoring that will be updated as the compliance calendar progresses, set from 2027, to contrast the hypotheses of the projected scenario with the actual deployment of infrastructures, production capacity, and availability of renewable fuels in Spanish and Portuguese ports.
