Europe risks falling behind China in the race to produce the clean fuels needed to decarbonize global shipping, according to an updated tracker from Transport and Environment, the Brussels based clean transport group. The organization’s shipping e-fuels observatory found that Europe is home to 69 planned e-fuel projects that could serve the maritime sector, but only six of them are currently operational, underscoring how difficult it has been for developers to move large scale projects from announcement to production.
Spain leads the continent in e-fuel development, followed by Denmark, Finland and France, according to the tracker. The largest operational project serving the maritime sector, the Kassø facility developed by European Energy in Denmark, began supplying e-methanol to a Maersk containership in 2025. If all 69 announced European projects eventually became operational, Transport and Environment estimates they could produce up to 4.09 million tonnes of oil equivalent of e-fuels by 2033, enough to cover roughly 14 percent of European shipping’s total fuel needs.
That potential remains largely theoretical for now. Current European production volumes account for only about a quarter of the volumes required for the sector to meet the European Union’s FuelEU Maritime regulation, which sets a 1 percent target for renewable fuels of non biological origin, or RFNBO, by 2031. Transport and Environment’s analysis suggests that without new policy incentives, total European e-fuels production for shipping is unlikely to reach the levels needed to hit that target on schedule.
China, by contrast, already has three operational e-fuel projects that together produce roughly ten times more than all six of Europe’s operational plants combined, the tracker found. That scale advantage reflects China’s ability to move faster from planning to production, a gap that clean energy analysts warn could allow Chinese producers to establish a dominant position in the global e-fuels market well before European projects catch up. Should that happen, Europe could find itself importing the very fuels it is trying to develop domestically, potentially undercutting the EU’s own producers just as they attempt to scale.
The stakes extend beyond shipping fuel alone. Analysts at Transport and Environment argue that effective financial support combined with binding clean fuel targets at the EU level would help ensure the bloc remains competitive in what is shaping up to be a strategically important new market, one that touches energy security, industrial policy and climate commitments simultaneously. The group notes that Europe does retain some advantages, including a lead over all countries but China in battery powered vessels, and that more than half of the world’s green technology vessels currently sail to or from European ports.
Whether those advantages are enough to offset the production gap in e-fuels remains an open question. With the FuelEU Maritime deadlines approaching and Chinese producers already operating at significantly greater scale, the pressure is mounting on European policymakers and investors to accelerate projects that have so far struggled to move beyond the planning stage.
Sources: CleanTechnica, Transport and Environment, Transport and Environment E-Fuels Observatory.
Author: Pulse Of Nations Wire Desk
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