Manage technology and production risks E-fuels present new technological and production risks that need carefully managing. E-ammonia poses toxicity and handling challenges, while e-methanol blends must meet strict quality standards to ensure compatibility with engines and bunkering infrastructure.32,33 Robust offtake agreements can help address this by: –Aligning staged deliveries with commissioning milestones. –Embedding performance guarantees and make-good provisions. –Assigning responsibilities for safety and certification. Synchronizing delivery schedules with the rapidly growing dual-fuel vessel orderbook and port terminal expansions mitigates the risk of supply- demand mismatches. Taken together, these four pieces – de-risking capital investment, navigating regulatory volatility, enhancing projects’ economic viability, and managing technology and production risks – illustrate why long-term, risk-sharing offtake agreements are valuable. They can provide some certainty needed not only for suppliers, but also for financiers and shipowners to invest at scale, enabling zero-emissions fuels to move from pilot projects and green corridors to global fleet deployment. Smart solution: contracts for difference (CfDs) While offtake agreements are a cornerstone, they are not a guaranteed solution. To further bridge the price gap and create a level playing field for first movers, policy-based mechanisms such as contracts for difference (CfDs) are emerging as a complementary tool, offering predictable revenue support where market-based offtakes alone cannot close the investment case. Clean maritime fuels remain significantly more expensive than incumbent products. This green premium is one of the largest barriers to scaling-up. Contracts for difference offer a policy mechanism to directly bridge this price gap: governments or third-party entities commit to pay the difference between a reference fossil fuel price and the higher cost of a clean fuel. By stabilizing revenues for suppliers and capping exposure for buyers, CfDs de-risk investment in production and accelerate market uptake. Without CfDs to anchor pricing, enable long-term financing and mitigate early-mover disadvantages, large-scale industrial offtake remains economically out of reach and the market will not scale. That said, production and consumption at scale is macroeconomically viable already at today’s high prices. Patrick Stein-Kaempfe, Principal and Project Director, Hyphen Turning Challenge into Opportunity: Supplier Voices from Heavy-Emitting Sectors 17

Turning Challenge into Opportunity 2025