Upskilling seafarers to use alternative fuel

The shipping industry does not only have to find solutions for environmentally friendly fuel, it also needs to train hundreds of thousands of crew and staff who lack the skills for adjusting to such greener alternatives, Posidonia heard on Thursday.

Speakers at the Greener Shipping Summit, organized by Newsfront/Naftiliaki, noted that the sector needs climate-friendly as well as safe fuel, but that this also requires seafarer upskilling. Intercargo Chairman Dimitris Fafalios stressed that hundreds of thousands of seafarers around the world will need retraining to handle the new fuels and technologies necessary to push decarbonization forward, and that figure excludes shore-side staff who are also vital to the safe and green operations of fleets worldwide.

Natassa Kouvertari, project manager at the Maritime Decarbonisation Hub, Lloyd's Register, put the number of...