Podcast: Ships need to use greener fuels

Clean fuels are the only way the shipping industry can cut emissions. Not easy. Not impossible either.

The maritime industry emits only about 3% of the global carbon emissions. Reducing that will not immediately reduce global warming but in a world that needs to target zero emissions every bit counts. Reducing emissions from the shipping industry is not easy.

The international shipping industry does not come under national net zero goals. Which is why the role of IMO (the International Maritime Organization ,a specialised agency of the United Nations to regulate shipping) becomes important.

The IMO has already regulated against high sulphur content in shipping fuels. The rule limits the sulphur in the fuel oil used on ships to 0.5%. Reducing carbon emissions is not easy however.

Dr. Sanjay Kuttan, Chief Technology Officer of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization explains the difficulties and why it is important to focus on new types of fuels.

There are three ways to reduce emissions from the shipping industry. First, ships can move slowly but this is not always possible as the commercial contracts may specify delivery by a specified date. There are other technical solutions such as derating engines (preventing them from going above a particular speed limit). Obviously this is not always practically possible. The breakthrough will have to come to from a different type of fuel.

Shifting the shipping industry to alternative fuels is not easy. The “energy density” of these other fuels — ammonia, hydrogen, liquefied natural gas — is far lower than the marine heavy oil used by ships today. The problem is that space is very valuable in modern cargo ships and it is not possible to create additional space to carry fuel. It is thus even more important that ports, across the world, can procure and store these new types of fuels. Then engines will have to be modified to burn these new fuels. Upgraded engines will start becoming available sometime between 2024 to 2026. The shipping lines can move to new types of fuels only when the entire infrastructure is ready.

This is where the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization is focusing on. One fuel that the Centre is focusing on is ammonia. Ammonia does not have carbon atom but is toxic. The Centre is developing detailed guidelines for bunkering (the logistics of procuring, storing and supplying the fuel to ships) and training people to safely use the fuel. The Centre runs as a non-profit organization and is developing the guidelines in collaboration with about 100 industry participants across the fuel. The Centre is also focusing on second generation biofuels (think items like used cooking oils).

Using other sources of renewable energy in the shipping industry is not quite practical today. Solar cells do not have the same level of efficiency to be able to power large ships. And while wind has been the way sailing ships have moved in history, there is no space to put up large sails in modern ships. New ways of using are being experimented upon such as kites and new types of sail designs. But they are not there yet.

Squeezing out energy efficiency is possible, but has its limits. Digital technologies can help to increase operational efficiencies to a certain extent. But it is hard to make ships that will take the rough and tumble of the high seas with lighter material. The hard job of making ships run on low carbon fuel is the one that needs to be done.

The Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization is in Singapore which as Ken Hickson, the Singapore based veteran commentator on sustainability says is one of the most important maritime centres of the world. International organizations such as DNV are using Singapore as a place to test and promote innovations across the world. The Centre itself is funding the development and testing of these new technologies and developing the collaborations between various public and private organizations to enable the shipping industry to move to cleaner fuels.

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