Decarbonization

The industry responsible for transporting more than 80 percent of all goods globally and for more than a billion tons of CO2 emissions annually, is steaming ahead with plans to slash its total greenhouse gas output in half by 2050 while increasing the cargo it transports.

Shipping companies around the globe have signed on to an international commitment to find alternative fuels, create more efficient ships, optimize speed and routes, and use big data to sail more efficiently, all in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the 2016 Paris Accord on climate change.

The maritime industry’s effort is being propelled by a combination of altruism and good business sense, and is being accelerated by a sense of urgency about the impact of climate change on the planet and rising seas on ports all over the globe.

As the industry transitions, the impacts will be felt on shore in places like the Charleston and Wando terminals. Indeed, they already are, says Mark Messersmith, SC Ports’ Permitting Manager.

“Many shipping lines have already made significant environmental strides by switching to ultra-low sulfur fuels to further reduce emissions, as well as by investing in scrubbers on ships, resulting in less exhaust and emissions from fuels,” he said.

In the future, SC Ports and other ports around the nation will have to grapple with servicing larger ships running on different fuels than they do now. Landside infrastructure will be necessary to store and transport those new fuels to ships.

The world’s largest shipping company, Copenhagen, Denmark-based A.P. Møller – Mærsk, is serving as the tip of the spear on the issue, committing back in 2007 to move towards net zero emissions on its 700 vessels by 2050.

Since 2008, Mærsk has employed design and sailing efficiencies to reduce CO2 emissions 46 percent per container per mile. With increased business, that has lowered total emissions by about 20%.

Maersk director of environment and sustainability Dr. Lee Kindberg acknowledges that won’t be sufficient to reach the ultimate goal of total decarbonization.

“Efficiency will not get you to zero,” she said. “You can improve only so far. Our goal is to reduce the efficiency metric 60% by 2030.”

“It is going to take new fuels, new propulsion and new energy systems. When we set the goal we didn’t know how we would get there. Now we can see a path,” she added.

Mærsk has already begun building the world’s first ”green” cargo ship – a small methanol-powered vessel for short runs, to enter the fleet in 2023. Methanol is a renewable biofuel that produces low carbon emissions.

The impetus for Maersk’s transformation was demand in the marketplace from companies that themselves are seeking to decarbonize.

Kindberg says 90 of Mærsk’s 200 largest customers have set ambitious decarbonization goals of their own and want their shipping vendors to help them get there. Some customers have indicated their willingness to absorb some of the added initial cost of decarbonization, she said.

For a customer measuring the carbon footprint of its product’s full lifecycle, cutting the CO2 required to carry it 5,000 miles across the ocean can provide some serious uplift.

In the long run, dozens of advances in operations and fuel use will power the maritime industry towards decarbonization. Energy companies are experimenting with myriad alternative fuels from cooking oil waste and sugar cane extract to ammonia and hydrogen.

Fuels in consideration must offer high energy density, low- or no-greenhouse gas emissions, ease of storage and other properties to replace oil now propelling ships. Efforts to produce biofuels must balance their impact on food production, crop prices and food availability.

Experiments with hydrogen and ammonia, thought by many to be the most likely carbon-free shipping fuels in the future, are underway across the globe right now, says Natasha Brown, the head of public information services for the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The IMO will decide in June whether to assess shipping companies $5-$6 billion to support research and development into development of alternative fuels.

The IMO has established a series of targets and goals for the maritime industry, and has coordinated with governments to offer incentives to shippers that meet those goals.

Shipping companies say they just want a level playing field and the opportunity to decide for themselves how to innovate to reach performance goals, rather than have governments dictate it.

Because the $11 billion of exported cargo shipped annually moves all across the globe, the issues driving the move towards reducing maritime’s contribution to climate change will benefit everyone. And it is urgent, says Maersk’s Kindberg.

“To deliver a full fleet at zero emissions by 2050 we have to launch them by 2030, which means have to be ordering them by 2028, which means we have to be designing them right now,” she said. “It is something we have to be doing right now if we’re going to make it happen.”