Maritime UK, Carbon13 team up to accelerate maritime decarbonisation

Maritime UK, the collective voice for the UK’s maritime industries, is forming a partnership with Carbon13, the venture builder for the climate crisis, to support entrepreneurs reaching for net zero.

The appetite for green maritime technology is seen as a global opportunity for the British economy, and 2021 will see demand for carbon-neutral solutions increase exponentially. Real progress towards maritime decarbonisation is therefore essential, according to the duo.

However, while there has been huge progress made, there is still much more that needs to be done to reduce emissions and create carbon-neutral solutions. The expertise, the ambition and the commitment to net zero already exist, but the pathway to building startups that will grow into the UK’s next success stories still very much needs help.  

Therefore, Maritime UK has introduced Cabon13. The eight-month programme supports extraordinary individuals to launch highly scalable and investable ventures – and the maritime industry is one of the target sectors.

Specifically, each venture that is built and invested in must have the potential to reduce CO2e emissions by ten million tonnes. Collectively, Carbon13 aims to reduce emissions by 400 million tonnes, the equivalent to the UK’s current annual emissions. Maritime’s role in this effort is said to be crucial.

Maritime contributes around £46.1 billion to the UK economy and supports over 1 million jobs.

Building a startup that can reduce emissions by ten million tonnes means that in practice that that startup needs to help 100 million consumers reduce their footprint by 1%, or 10 million customers by 10%. But if the startup is enterprise-facing, it will be helping the top 20 emitters reduce their footprints by half a million tonnes each, or the Fortune 1000 by 10,000 tonnes each.

Whether it is shipping, ports, services, engineering or leisure marine industries, all of these niches are plenty big enough to develop and support ventures that can have this kind of impact, and beyond, the partners said in a statement.

“There is no greater mission facing our planet than to decarbonise our economy, and that means massive progress must be made in an incredibly short period of time. That’s especially true for maritime – a sector responsible for enabling global trade, including some 95% of all imports and exports to the United Kingdom,” Ben Murray, Director of Maritime UK, commented.

“Whilst the pace of change and innovation is quickening, there is much progress that needs to be made to ensure we have viable carbon-neutral solutions by the end of this decade. Those solutions do not yet fully exist and that’s why we need to support the best talent to develop the most innovative of products and services, from wherever they come.”

“We’re excited that this partnership with Carbon13 will help identify and realise truly transformational solutions and equally provide a talented pool of innovative companies to help respond to the challenges our sector faces.”