Fuel Transition: 534 'Alt Fuel' Containerships on Order

“As of end August 2025, 534 container ships are on order which will be able to use alternative fuels upon delivery. These represent 53% of ships on order and 77% of the TEU,” says Niels Rasmussen, Chief Shipping Analyst at BIMCO.

In addition to these alternatively-fuelled ships, the order book also includes 321 ships that will use heavy fuel and another 155 ships that will be delivered ready for a future conversion to alternative fuels.

Alternative fuels have proven particularly popular for the largest ships while orders for smaller alternatively-fuelled ships lag behind. For ships with 8,000 TEU capacity or more, 81% of the ships and 85% of the TEU capacity on order are for alternatively-fuelled ships.

“Despite an increase in orders for alternatively-fuelled ships in recent years, the other three main shipping sectors still lag behind the container sector in this respect. In the bulker, crude tanker and product tanker sectors, alternatively-fuelled ships only make up only respectively 8%, 17% and 9% of the ships on order,” says Rasmussen.

There can be several reasons why the bulker and tanker sectors still order comparatively fewer