Industry Backs Plan to Cut GHG from Shipping

Finnish technology group Wartsila and SEA\LNG have both this week given their support to the agreement reached by the International Maritime Organization for shipping to halve its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, relative to 2008.

“This long-awaited agreement represents an important milestone for global shipping. It is critical that we have an industry-wide framework for reducing emissions, and this sends a clear signal that we should all join forces in promoting carbon-free shipping,” said Wartsila CEO Jaakko Eskola. “The next extremely important step must be to define concrete abatement measures, and to establish a clear roadmap together with the industry and decision-making bodies.”

Eskola said that “a clean-shipping future must be based on a combination of different technologies and various solutions. These will include cleaner fuels, efficient vessel designs, hybrid propulsion technologies, and intelligent vessels.”

Increased adoption of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a marine fuel will be needed to accelerate the reduction in greenhouse gases and it can already enable reductions from vessels by as much as 30%. But Wartsila said the industry should look beyond just vessel-level emissions. To be truly effective, we need to target everything involved in moving goods and passengers, he said, conjuring up a digitalised world of the future where smart vessels and smart ports enable the more efficient and cleaner transport of goods and people.

SEA\LNG also in agreement

SEA\LNG, the multi-sector industry coalition aiming to accelerate the widespread adoption of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a marine fuel, also said it supported the level of ambition outlined by the IMO’s Initial Strategy. LNG, in combination with efficiency measures being developed for new ships in response to the IMO’s Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), will provide a way of meeting the IMO’s decarbonisation target of a 40% decrease by 2030 for international shipping, it said April 19.

Advances in dual fuel technology and propulsion, enhanced control systems, and future use of gas turbine technologies present further opportunities for increased GHG reductions, it said. 

Competing fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia are not economic, not available at scale, and unproven for shipping operations. They will require huge investments by industry and governments over decades to realise their potential, it said. But LNG offers a bridge to a zero-carbon future – bioLNG from biogas can be used as a ‘drop-in’ fuel, significantly reducing GHG emissions, while longer term, ‘power-to-gas’ is a key technology with the potential to produce large volumes of renewable LNG, it said.