Industry-wide emissions averages are obscuring significant differences in the carbon intensity of individual container shipping operations, a new report from VesselBot has found.
The report, Decoding Maritime Emissions Q1 2026: Efficiency Under Pressure, examined 82,212 voyages completed by 6,187 container vessels during the first quarter of 2026, providing a ‘voyage-level’ analysis of emissions performance across vessel sizes, carriers, age groups, trade routes, and individual carriers.
This analysis reveals why ‘fleet-wide averages fail to reflect the operational reality of individual shipments’, VesselBot said, adding that its findings provide the operational visibility necessary for shippers and logistics teams to make more informed operational decisions.
Operational performance
“Real-time execution-grade maritime emissions data at the carrier, vessel, and port-pair level gives logistics teams the visibility needed to evaluate operational performance and optimise transportation decisions based on how shipments actually move rather than on generalised industry averages,” commented Constantine Komodromos, CEO and founder of VesselBot.
As the report noted, average well-to-wake emissions intensity across all voyages reached 208.2g CO₂e per TEU-km during the quarter. However, the study found substantial variation between vessel categories, with feeder ships recording emissions intensity of 266g CO₂e per TEU-km.
According to VesselBot, these differences are largely structural, driven primarily by vessel size, cargo utilisation and voyage distance.
Trade routes
The report also identified notable differences in emissions performance between carriers operating on the same major trade routes, driven primarily by vessel deployment choices, cargo utilisation, and port-pair combinations, rather than speed alone.
Utilisation remains the strongest operational determinant of efficiency, the report added – the most efficient voyages operated with average utilisation rates of 77% and carried around 9,163 TEU, compared with 51% utilisation among the least efficient voyages.
“As commercial and regulatory pressure intensifies, and geopolitical disruptions continue to reshape global supply chains, voyage-level intelligence is becoming essential not only for emissions reporting, but also for improving transportation efficiency, carrier selection, and supply chain resilience,” Komodromos added. Read more here.
