China Classification Society says future onboard carbon capture technology will advance towards the goals of high efficiency, compactness, low energy consumption and low cost. The society is supporting the safe adoption of the technology while innovation progresses.

In April 2025, MEPC 83 meeting officially approved the development plan for the regulatory framework for onboard carbon capture and storage (OCCS). Concurrently, with continuous breakthroughs in onboard carbon capture technology, China Classification Society (CCS) expects the technology to enter a period of large-scale promotion around 2030 to become one of the primary technologies for deep decarbonisation in the shipping industry.

Niu Song, from CCS’s Shanghai Rules & Research Institute, say that faced with these increasingly stringent requirements, the emission reduction potential of traditional energy-saving measures (such as high-efficiency propellers and low-resistance hull designs) is approaching a bottleneck. Meanwhile new alternative fuels (methanol, ammonia, hydrogen) face practical obstacles including insufficient infrastructure and high retrofitting costs. “Against this backdrop, onboard carbon capture technology has emerged as an innovative solution to meet the industry’s rigorous demands.”