Wärtsilä's technology leadership and industry-leading service network give us a good starting point to seize the opportunities offered by the growing environmental focus of the marine and energy industries.
Decarbonisation is shaping the future of the marine industry, with the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by or around 2050. Wärtsilä has the industry’s most comprehensive offering for decarbonisation, focusing on fuel flexibility, efficiency optimisation, emission abatement technologies, and digital services. 2050 is a single vessel’s lifespan away, while the technology decisions for new vessels are being made now.
Wärtsilä is developing an unprecedented range of engine and fuel gas supply systems to help ship owners navigate the route to reduced greenhouse gas emissions – fuel flexibility and efficiency being at the centre of our development activities. With our multifuel technology, ranging from transition fuels to sustainable, 100% green fuels, our customers have a viable upgrade path for the future.
Today, Wärtsilä has the most comprehensive development programme for sustainable fuel technologies in the industry, with proven 4-stroke technology for the use of LNG, LPG, methanol, and ammonia. We are preparing for a commercial release of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in 2025. Our CCS-ready scrubbers are available already today.
Wärtsilä’s fleet optimisation solutions manage voyage performance with real-time decision support, helping our customers achieve optimised routing and port operations with tangible fuel savings.
Wärtsilä offers flexible engine power plant and energy storage solutions, providing both balancing power and baseload generation, and lifecycle services to enable an optimised transition to renewable energy systems. Due to the intermittency of wind and solar power, the transition to a 100% renewable energy future requires balancing solutions. Our market-leading technologies enable the safe addition of an increasing share of renewables to power systems to futureproof our customers’ assets and to reduce costs and emissions. With our deep understanding of power systems and different generation technologies, we support our customers on their path towards decarbonised operations.
Flexible balancing power capacity, such as engines and energy storage, complement each other and can quickly react to changes in the volatile energy system, providing the needed flexibility and stability to ensure the maximum utilisation of renewables.
Our engine power plants can already use 100% synthetic and carbon-neutral methane and methanol. They are also capable of using hydrogen/natural gas blends containing up to 25% hydrogen. In 2024, we launched the world’s first large-scale 100% hydrogen-ready engine power plant concept.
As the share of renewables in the energy mix grows, more balancing power is needed. Our 200+ power system studies have shown that careful planning of power systems can save billions and rapidly reduce CO₂ emissions. We create value through our extensive knowledge of power systems and from integrating different energy solutions and assets. With our leading digital energy platform, GEMS, we can help our customers optimise different assets at the lowest overall energy cost.
Wärtsilä’s industry-leading service network is a key enabler for maximum uptime, reliability, and total lifecycle solutions, all of which ensure customer success. Our network provides preventive, responsive, and optimised service, as well as lifecycle upgrades and remote support throughout the lifecycle of an installation. With our quality field service professionals around the globe, we can provide our customers with timely support wherever needed.
Wärtsilä has significant growth opportunities in all steps of the service value ladder. In transactional services, we support our customers by leveraging digital solutions for customer intelligence and automated lead management. We deliver enhanced performance through optimised maintenance and performance-based service agreements, where we guarantee the agreed performance by leveraging connectivity, big data, and analytics. The green transition is expected to provide a potential growth of +2x for retrofits and conversions of Wärtsilä’s running engine fleet by 2030.
The agreement coverage rate of our installed base is around 30%, and we see clear further opportunities for growth. The renewal rate of our service agreements is more than 90%, which is a proof point of the value that our lifecycle agreements are creating for our customers.
Wärtsilä’s strong financial position and liquidity support our capital allocation principles and allow us to make strategic investments while offering solid dividends to our shareholders.
Wärtsilä’s financial targets were last reconfirmed on Capital Markets Day in 2023.
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Wärtsilä has a strong track record in innovations, and our competencies are instrumental in securing a sustainable future for the marine and energy sectors. There are strong synergies between marine and energy in research and development (R&D) and manufacturing of new technologies. Throughout the decarbonisation transformation, we invest ~4% of net sales in R&D annually.
As the decarbonisation transformation in the marine and energy sectors moves forward, there will be a need for a broad array of solutions. Our focus in-house is on developing core technologies, and through partnering with technology providers we can ensure a broad solution offering for our customers. Already today, Wärtsilä engines can run with biofuels, methanol, and up to 25% hydrogen blends. In Q4 2023 we announced an engine concept operating with pure ammonia fuel, and in Q2 2024 the engine concept operating with pure hydrogen. The pure hydrogen concept is estimated to be ready for orders in 2025. It is important to acknowledge that while much of the decarbonisation work in the marine and energy industries is still ahead, Wärtsilä already has solutions and technologies that enable the transition to decarbonised shipping and 100% renewable power systems.
