According to CNBC, the Danish company already ordered 13 ships that run on green methanol from South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries. Green methanol is considered to be a cleaner fuel compared to the fossil fuels that usually power ships.

This is one of the steps that Maersk plans to take in order to become net-zero by 2040, but the company must make sure than it will be able to supply the new ships with the fuel necessary in order to keep the change going.

Morten Bo Christiansen, Maersk’s head of decarbonization, said that "it is a chicken and egg type situation."

"The vessels will arrive prior to the fuels, which is of course not ideal quite frankly. When we ordered the vessels, there was no supplier whatsoever", he added.

Maersk signed an agreement back in March with six energy companies in order for them to start accelerating the production of green methanol so the shipping company won't be running dry on fuel.

The company's head of decarbonization said that the 13 ships should be running on green methanol by 2026, and in the meantime, they can make use of fossil-fuels to keep them going, but "the intention is clearly that these ships will be operating on green methanol."

A Maersk official said that the company "pledged that alternative fuels, like biomethane, will cover at least 10% of ships’ consumption by 2023."

The team at Maersk explores other fuel alternatives, such as ammonia. Christiansen says that "it is hailed as the big fuel for the future and it may well be", adding that the infrastructure is still some years away from powering ships.

"The other challenge with ammonia is that it is a gas. It is complex to handle, it’s expensive to handle, and it is highly toxic both to human beings but not least to the marine environment. It means that safety on board is an issue", he added.

One thing that is clear is the fact that, in order to be successful in the process of decarbonization, companies must use a host of alternative resources instead of relying only on one of them.

To this, the head of decarbonization at Maersk says that "we don’t have the luxury that we can just use one technology, we will need to use a host of technologies to solve the problem."