The Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) and Development Bank of Japan Inc. (DBJ) have announced a five-year Impact partnership to accelerate the adoption of maritime decarbonisation solutions through innovative financing approaches.
The partnership combines GCMD’s experience in conducting real-world pilots with DBJ’s transition financing expertise and extensive shipping and maritime portfolio. It builds on the organisations’ successful collaboration through the US$ 35m fund for energy efficiency technologies (FEET) — the first fund for vessel retrofits to leverage a pay-as-you-save payment mechanism. In addition to being the fund’s preferred equity provider, DBJ helped shape the financing framework by drawing on its extensive experience in maritime investment.
Improving energy efficiency is considered to remain one of the most effective near-term strategies for reducing fuel consumption and emissions. Yet the adoption of energy efficiency technologies (EETs) continues to face barriers, including uncertainty around technology performance, challenges in quantifying fuel savings, and limited access to financing. FEET addresses these barriers by linking lease payments for the retrofits directly to quantified and verified fuel savings.
Since its close, FEET has established a strong pipeline of retrofit opportunities spanning a range of energy efficiency technologies and vessel owners across diverse market segments. Separately, pilots are also underway to acquire high-frequency and high-resolution operational data that will help quantify savings across a broader range of EETs. GCMD, DBJ and a consortium of partners were recently recognised with Marine Money’s Wild Card East Deal Award for the innovative financing structure of FEET, which helps tackle the longstanding data-financing gap that has precluded the shipping industry from adopting EETs more broadly.
As Japan’s national development bank, DBJ plays a key role in supporting the country’s energy transition, and has committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its investment and loan portfolios by 2050. Following GCMD’s knowledge partnership with the Asian Development Bank, DBJ’s entry as an Impact partner marks a major step forward in expanding GCMD’s engagement with financial institutions. By strengthening partnerships with leading financial institutions, GCMD aims to help address investment barriers needed to accelerate maritime decarbonisation.
Prof Lynn Loo, GCMD CEO, said: “Welcoming DBJ as an Impact partner is a meaningful extension of the work we have already done together through FEET. Decarbonising shipping is not just a technology challenge; it is also a financing and risk-allocation challenge. To scale practical solutions, we need to connect operational data and verified performance with financing structures to accelerate technology deployment. DBJ is a mission-aligned partner who brings valuable transition finance expertise to GCMD’s ecosystem.”
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