The future of antifouling

Ulf Hansen, senior advisor maritime at Swedish company I-Tech AB, addressed the RINA Ship Energy Efficiency Conference in Athens in March 2026 with a data-driven challenge to the growing regulatory momentum towards biocide-free antifouling. His answer was unambiguous: yes, biocides remain essential, and prematurely restricting them risks making shipping’s environmental performance significantly worse, not better.

The scale of the problem

An estimated 200 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually are attributable to biofouling resistance, representing around 20% of total shipping emissions. A complete absence of effective antifouling protection could push that figure to