In today’s shipping market, running an efficient vessel is no longer enough.
According to Natalia Liashenko, CEO and founder of Marine Solver, the industry is becoming too focused on operational performance while overlooking a deeper issue that increasingly determines whether a ship succeeds or fails under modern environmental regulations: commercial decision-making.
With CII ratings and the EU ETS now reshaping the economics of global shipping, every extra mile sailed and every unnecessary hour spent waiting in port effectively becomes a hidden carbon cost that impacts a vessel’s annual environmental performance.
And in many cases, Liashenko argues, the outcome is already decided before the engine even starts.
While much of the industry’s decarbonisation efforts remain centred around cleaner fuels, new vessel technologies and operational efficiency, she believes there is a third layer that receives far less attention the commercial layer, where chartering decisions ultimately define a ship’s environmental trajectory.
“The real battle for the CII rating is won or lost in the chartering office,” she explains.
Liashenko compares the situation to a vessel navigating through a fairway at sea. In traditional navigation, a fairway represents the safest route through the water. Commercially, however, every cargo selection, route choice and delivery commitment effectively creates a “commercial fairway” that shapes the vessel’s future emissions profile.
Once a ship is committed to a certain trade pattern or geographical area, its environmental flexibility becomes limited.
A vessel may still optimise fuel consumption and speed during the voyage itself, but if the overall trading pattern involves long ballast legs, congested ports or inefficient routing, even flawless execution onboard may not be enough to protect its annual rating.
This is what Liashenko describes as the “geographical trap.”
According to modelling carried out by Marine Solver, two identical sister ships operating under different commercial patterns can end up with dramatically different environmental outcomes. One vessel may comfortably maintain a C rating, while another struggles with an E rating simply because of where and how it is employed.
In those situations, the problem is no longer operational.
“The issue isn’t in the engine room or on the bridge,” Liashenko says. “It starts with the original voyage selection.”
One of the biggest structural problems, she argues, is the disconnect between short-term commercial thinking and long-term environmental targets.
Chartering teams often make decisions voyage by voyage, reacting to immediate market opportunities. But CII performance is measured over an entire year. Without visibility over the vessel’s longer term emissions trajectory, operators can easily find themselves trapped in inefficient trading patterns that become difficult to correct later.
By the time mid-year environmental reports arrive, the damage may already be done.
“The fairway has already led the vessel into a dead end,” Liashenko notes.
The growing complexity of cargo combinations, bunker pricing, port congestion and regional trade dynamics also means that traditional spreadsheet planning is becoming increasingly inadequate for modern decarbonisation management.
As a result, Liashenko believes the industry now needs to move away from isolated voyage optimisation and toward continuous situational modelling supported by advanced digital systems.
Rather than focusing only on the next fixture, companies need tools capable of evaluating entire voyage chains and identifying commercial patterns that align with long-term emissions goals.
Even with incomplete market visibility, she says it is possible to identify exit strategies from low-efficiency trading regions and build cargo sequences that support a healthier annual CO2 profile.
For Liashenko, the competitive advantage in shipping is shifting rapidly.
Success is no longer determined solely by how well a vessel is operated at sea, but by the quality of the strategic decisions that position the vessel in the first place.
“Flawless steering is vital,” she says, “but it cannot compensate for a wrong course.”
