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# Ethanol as a Marine Fuel: How a Road Biofuel Became Shipping's Fastest-Moving Alternative
- URL: https://review.iffw.sg/ethanol-as-a-marine-fuel-how-a-road-biofuel-became-shippings-fastest-moving-alternative/
- Published: 2026-09-15T00:30:51.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T00:30:52.000Z
- Description: Three shipping operators, Maersk, X-Press Feeders and CMA CGM, reached commercial-scale ethanol bunkering within twelve months, reusing methanol-built infrastructure. IMO certified ethanol's carbon intensity in May 2026, clearing its compliance bar with room to spare.
- Author: Editor
- Tags: Ethanol, Maritime

Twelve months ago, ethanol was not part of the mainstream conversation about shipping's fuel transition. Methanol, ammonia and LNG dominated industry attention, each with dedicated engine platforms, bunkering pilots and trade associations built around them. Ethanol had none of that infrastructure of its own. What it had, instead, was a shortcut: it is chemically similar enough to methanol that much of the infrastructure built for one alcohol fuel works for the other with minimal modification. Over the following year, three shipping operators independently tested that shortcut, and each one worked.

## Three Operators, One Fuel, Twelve Months

Maersk, X-Press Feeders and CMA CGM each reached commercial-scale ethanol bunkering within a single twelve-month window, and all three did it the same way: by reusing engines, tanks and bunkering procedures that had originally been built for methanol.

The sequence began in Rotterdam. On 23 May 2026, X-Press Feeders' *Eco Levant* took on a 10% ethanol, 90% ISCC-certified bio-methanol blend, becoming the first bunker vessel to deliver ethanol safely in the port. Maersk moved next, and moved fastest. Between October and December 2025, its *Laura Maersk* ran blend trials at sea stepping up from E10 (10% ethanol, 90% e-methanol) to E50, with ignition, burn efficiency and corrosion all matching pure methanol's performance. By June 2026, Maersk had gone further still: *Laura Maersk* took a barge delivery of 100% ethanol in Rotterdam, following the company's first successful 100% ethanol trial in May, proving that supply-chain readiness and fuel handling could hold up at commercial scale, not just in a laboratory test. On 9 July 2026, Maersk scaled the same pathway onto a larger vessel, *Antonia Maersk*, at the Port of Barcelona, again on 100% ethanol.

Three days later, CMA CGM completed the most demanding test of the three. On 12 July 2026, the 13,000-TEU *CMA CGM Iron* took on 500 metric tonnes of 100% anhydrous bioethanol at the Port of Santos, Brazil, supplied by Copersucar. It was the first deep-sea, commercial-scale ethanol bunkering operation in Latin America.

Looking beyond these trials, Vale's Guaibamax newbuilds, planned for 2029, represent a different kind of milestone: ships designed from the outset to run on 100% ethanol, rather than vessels retrofitted or adapted from another fuel pathway. If Maersk, X-Press Feeders and CMA CGM proved that existing methanol-capable ships could burn ethanol, Vale's newbuild programme is the first sign that shipowners are willing to design specifically around it.

## Inside the CMA CGM Iron: What Made Brazil's Bunkering Different

The *CMA CGM Iron* is a 13,000-TEU deep-sea containership built by HD Hyundai Samho and delivered in 2025, the first of twelve vessels CMA CGM ordered on a tri-fuel platform capable of running on conventional fuel, methanol or ethanol. Its Everllence B&W G95ME-C10.5-LGIM engine was certified for ethanol after two years of testing, extending capability that had already been built for methanol dual-fuel engines. That certification is the specific technical development that made the Brazil bunkering possible without requiring any new engine technology.

The supply chain behind the operation is worth setting out in full, because it is what distinguishes this event from the Maersk and X-Press Feeders trials that preceded it. Copersucar, one of the world's largest sugar and ethanol traders, supplied roughly 500,000 to 650,000 litres of anhydrous bioethanol. Bunker One delivered it via the bunker barge *Dona Isa*. AGEO Terminais provided storage, and Santos Brasil's Tecon Santos terminal completed the physical chain from shore to ship. This was, by the companies' own description, the first bioethanol bunkering of a deep-sea containership in Brazil and the first commercial operation of its kind in Latin America. The distinction from the earlier trials is structural rather than incidental: this involved a full commercial supply chain, from production and storage through barge delivery to engine approval, rather than a fuel-compatibility test conducted under controlled conditions.

*CMA CGM Iron* continued its scheduled service after bunkering, calling at Paranaguá, Colombo in Sri Lanka, and Singapore, before its final destination in China. Ethanol is reported to have powered part of the voyage, covering the leg toward Colombo. CMA CGM and Copersucar have not disclosed whether the ethanol lasted the full route to China or was used for only a portion of it, a detail that remains genuinely unconfirmed rather than simply unremarked upon.

## Singapore and China's Methanol Infrastructure Already Works for Ethanol

Two of Asia's most significant bunkering hubs have spent the past year building out methanol infrastructure that, by design or by coincidence, doubles as ethanol infrastructure.

Singapore began licensing methanol fuel suppliers on 1 January 2026\. The Maritime and Port Authority issued five-year licences to three companies, Global Energy Trading, Golden Island and PetroChina International, to supply methanol as ship fuel. Alongside the licensing, a new safety rulebook known as TR129 sets out exactly how methanol should be delivered to ships, covering fuel-transfer steps, precise measurement of delivered volume, and crew training requirements. Vopak, one of the two largest bunkering terminal operators in Singapore, is upgrading its storage tanks to handle methanol, and Tuas Port has already run simultaneous methanol bunkering alongside cargo operations.

China has built comparable capability across two ports. Shanghai and Zhoushan became the first Chinese ports able to regularly conduct ship-to-ship methanol transfers at sea, and Ningbo-Zhoushan has since added the same ship-to-ship transfer capability specifically for certified green methanol. In February 2026, ten Chinese government ministries jointly published a plan naming Shanghai a hub for cleaner marine fuels by 2030, targeting one million tonnes per year of combined methanol and biofuel bunkering capacity, not methanol alone. Two companies, Chimbusco and PetroChina Fuel Oil, already hold licences to supply it.

The reason this infrastructure converts so directly to ethanol comes down to shared chemistry rather than shared regulation. Methanol and ethanol are both simple alcohols, and their similar polarity means the same seals, coatings and linings work for both fuels. That chemical similarity has already been written into technical standards: ClassNK's August 2026 guidelines, edition 3.1, set shared structural-strength rules for methanol and ethanol tanks. TR129's hose connections, gas detection and mass-flow metering procedures are alcohol-fuel steps that have already been piloted with ethanol in Rotterdam. And Everllence's ME-LGIM engine platform, originally built for methanol, is now certified for ethanol using the same fuel-injection architecture. Four separate systems, tank design, bunkering procedure, safety regulation and engine technology, all transfer from one alcohol fuel to the other with minimal adaptation, which is the underlying reason methanol-focused infrastructure investment across Singapore and China is not fuel-specific in practice, whatever its original intent.

## IMO Gives Ethanol a Certified Carbon-Intensity Pathway

The regulatory foundation behind all of this activity moved almost as fast as the commercial trials themselves.

At MEPC 81 in March 2024, the International Maritime Organization adopted its 2024 Life Cycle Assessment Guidelines and created GESAMP Working Group 46, the independent scientific body responsible for reviewing and approving default emission factors for marine fuels. As of February 2026, industry was still lobbying to have ethanol formally included in that review process. The value landed just three months later: in May 2026, GESAMP delivered ethanol's first default emissions factor, setting Brazilian second-crop corn ethanol's well-to-wake greenhouse gas intensity at 20.8 grams of CO2-equivalent per megajoule, about 78% below the IMO's fossil shipping fuel baseline of 93.3 gCO2e/MJ.

That figure matters because the IMO sets its own minimum bar for a biofuel to count as genuinely low-carbon: a fuel must cut emissions by at least 65% on a well-to-wake basis compared to standard fuel to qualify for compliance recognition under MEPC.1/Circ.905-Rev.1\. Ethanol clears that threshold with considerable room to spare, at a reduction closer to 78% than the required 65%.

The compliance stakes were raised further at MEPC 83 in April 2025, where the IMO agreed the Net-Zero Framework's Greenhouse Gas Fuel Intensity (GFI) targets, discussed at length elsewhere in this series' coverage of the Net-Zero Framework's subsequent political turbulence. Two compliance paths were set: a stricter trajectory requiring a 21% cut by 2030 and 43% by 2035, and a softer path requiring 8% and 30% reductions with correspondingly lower penalties for falling short. Ethanol's certified emissions performance gives ship operators a genuine route to meeting either target, using a fuel with an already-established commercial and logistical base rather than a technology still working toward first commercial deployment.

Sugarcane ethanol, the pathway most directly relevant to Thailand and Southeast Asia specifically, is expected to follow the same GESAMP review process next, meaning the region's dominant ethanol feedstock has not yet received its own certified default emissions value, even as Brazilian corn ethanol's has already cleared the process.

One regulatory gap remains open. Current IMO safety rules treat ethanol and methanol as functionally identical, despite ethanol being less toxic and less corrosive than methanol in practice. Fuel producers are pushing the IMO to write separate safety rules reflecting that real difference, rather than continuing to regulate both fuels under the same framework. The next working session on this question, CCC 12, convenes in September 2026, but formal approval of distinct rules for ethanol is not expected before 2027, leaving a period during which the regulatory framework lags slightly behind the fuel's actual physical properties.

## What This Means Taken Together

None of these four developments, the shipping trials, the Brazil bunkering, the Singapore and China infrastructure build-out, or the IMO's emissions certification, happened as part of a single coordinated strategy. They occurred independently, driven by different companies and different regulatory bodies working on different timelines. What connects them is that each one removed a specific barrier that has historically slowed other alternative marine fuels: engine availability, bunkering infrastructure, supply chain logistics, and regulatory recognition. Ethanol cleared all four in roughly the same twelve-month window, largely by inheriting infrastructure and certification work that methanol had already done the hard work of establishing.

Whether that pace continues depends on questions this year's developments have not yet resolved: whether sugarcane ethanol receives its own GESAMP default value, whether the IMO ultimately writes ethanol-specific safety rules rather than continuing to treat it as methanol's regulatory equivalent, and whether the current cluster of trials and single bunkering operations converts into the kind of repeat, high-volume commercial activity that would signal a genuine shift in shipping's fuel mix rather than a well-documented set of firsts.

**Sources:* MEPC.391(81); MEPC 83 Net-Zero Framework; MEPC.1/Circ.905-Rev.1; Maersk, X-Press Feeders, CMA CGM and Copersucar company statements; Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore; ClassNK; Chinese Ministry of Transport and joint ministerial statements, 2025-2026.*