SHIPOWNERS and politicians alike were out in force in Athens on Monday pushing a message of political pragmatism for shipping and warning that a rapid, scaled investment in zero carbon fuelled tonnage is not going to happen quickly.

Shipping has become “the punch bag” of European regulators, said JP Morgan’s head of its Global Transportation Group Andy Dacy, speaking at the Capital Link Posidonia conference. But that will not accelerate shipping’s energy transition which was almost wholly reliant on factors outside of the industry’s control.

“We could order LNG powered ships, we can order green methanol powered ships, we can order ammonia powered ships… but these fuels are not available, some of them are not safe and the scalability aspect is in significant question,” Dacy said to an approving crowd.

As a Greek-heavy crowd, dominated by tanker and dry bulk interests, gathered for its biennial Posidonia get together, the headline message from a high-profile succession of shipowners was that scaled ordering of zero carbon fuelled ships is on the immediate horizon.

“The reality is that we haven’t seen any real appetite from the oil majors to pay a premium for the dual fuel vessels that we have,” said Capital Maritime chairman Evangelos Marinkis. “I think it is still a case of whatever is cheaper is getting the business.”

Notable climate sceptic and Greek shipowning giant George Procopiou, who has previously used such gatherings to decry regulation to lower the carbon footprint of shipping as “bullshit”, was on more moderate form this year as he lambasted the hypocrisy of green regulation.

He said that the interests of environmentalists and shipowners had long been aligned, if only anyone would listen to him and his call for slow steaming as the standardised response to lower emissions.

“Slow steaming was the best option when I said this seven years ago — we could have saved millions of tonnes of CO2 by now,” he said.

While the uncertainties of the global energy transition and shipping’s regulatory requirements yet to come have left owners unwilling to move much beyond “optionality bets” on dual-fuelled tonnage, the industry is meeting amid supercharged earnings and record low orderbooks. That has led to significant speculation that Posidonia will see an order surge off the back of a week of industry meetings.

Despite uncertainty about what the dominant fuels of the future are going to be, Greek owners have been spending recent weeks visiting yards with a heavy focus on China where the hunt is on for early slots for the right deals.

Judging by the comments from successive waves of shipowner heavy panels at the Capital Link Forum on Monday, most of those orders that do emerge will be conventionally fuelled, or possibly LNG.

Over two thirds of new ships ordered so far in 2024 are fossil-fuel powered vessels.

“You can always invest, but it comes with a premium right now,” said Capt Abdulkareem Al Masabi, chief executive of Adnoc Logistics & Services, who had earlier that day confirmed a $1.5bn deal to buy Navig8 Group’s tanker fleet and pooling operations.

The push, he explained, had been from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s need to meet expanding transport demands from its parent’s energy growth.

But turning back to the question of how to make that more sustainable, he conceded that “there’s no magic solution to transform the industry overnight”.

If shipowners were starting to feel the heat from some quarters of the European political system, with just 211 days to go until FuelEU Maritime enters into force, it seems not all politicians were viewed as the opposition.

A popular keynote speech delivered by Greek shipping minister Christos Stylianides promised that some politicians were on the side of industry.

“Both at an international and an EU level, we will advocate realistic propositions,” he said addressing the uncertainties over zero carbon fuel availability.

“Sometimes we lose ourselves in the sky and we need to be on the ground,” he said to a round of applause from the audience.