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ABS’ macro perspective on decarbonisation


Class society American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) presented its macro perspective on maritime decarbonisation – what can be achieved through efficiency, carbon capture and future fuels
The “macro” picture for maritime decarbonisation is that it can only be achieved by the worldwide fleet through a mixture of energy efficiency measures, carbon capture technologies, and new zero carbon fuels, said Christopher J. Wiernicki, Chairman and CEO of ABS, speaking at the ABS Maritime Sustainability Summit in London on Sept 11, during London International Shipping Week.

Continuing the macro picture, perhaps energy efficiency measures can achieve a 15 per cent reduction of total fuel consumption.

Shipboard carbon capture, which removes CO2 from the flue gas onboard, could remove 70 per cent of CO2 from flue gas, he said.

New zero carbon fuels can include biofuels, green fuels made with renewable electricity, and blue fuels made with fossil fuels plus carbon capture onshore, so only zero carbon fuels are loaded onto the ship.

ABS anticipates that vessels with conventional single fuel engines will continue to be constructed “until well into the next decade”. For these vessels, there will be no other option but energy efficiency measures and retrofitted shipboard carbon capture technologies, he said.

It would be useful if shipping companies could demonstrate their demand for low carbon fuel to fuel producers, he said, including by pooling their purchasing with other companies.

“Decarbonization of shipping is increasingly a question of the ability of alternative fuel providers to deliver green product at affordable prices,” he said.

So the question of whether we decarbonise can be “pretty much boiled down” to whether costs can be brought down, and efficiencies improved, in two critical technologies. These are electrolysers and carbon capture, he said, speaking at the SHIPPINGInsight event in Stamford, Connecticut.

Electrolysers are needed to use renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, to provide hydrogen fuel (green hydrogen). Carbon capture is needed when reforming fossil methane into hydrogen and CO2, so theCO2 can be sequestered into the ground (blue hydrogen).

Shipboard carbon capture is something different, separating CO2 from a conventional flue gas onboard a vessel, putting it into a separate tank, then offloading it into a system which can deliver it to sequestration or utilisation.
“If you can’t reduce the cost of the electrolyser fast enough, then you’re into carbon capture, and you have to go from grey to blue to green,” he said.

It is already clear that we will be using multiple fuels in future and also combining our fuel use with technology, including digital technology, to work out how to move forward, he said.

There will be demand for green fuels from other industry sectors, including using ammonia for fertiliser. So, the shipping industry should perhaps not rely too much on them being available for shipping.

“Our findings show there is a significant amount of work to be done,” Mr Wiernicki said.

It would be useful to see a 5 per cent annual growth in green fuel adoption every year, so we could be using it entirely by 2043.

It would be useful for zero carbon methanol to be available over the next 20 years, so ships being built today to run on methanol could use it and be zero carbon, he said.

Decarbonisation is “thermodynamically achievable but kinetically challenging,” he said, meaning that from a technical point of view it is possible, but it will be hard to get there.


Onboard carbon capture

ABS analysed shipboard carbon capture, or what it calls “Onboard Carbon Capture and Storage” or OCCS.

It found it was viable for today’s technologies to capture 70 per cent of CO2 from the ship’s flue gas onboard.

The attraction of OCCS is that it can be used on existing vessels. They will need capture equipment to remove CO2 from a flue gas, a liquefaction system so that it is dense enough to store onboard (for example cooling and pressuring to -20 degrees C and 20 bar), tanks to store it onboard at this temperature and pressure, ports capable of receiving it, and ensuring it is sent to sequestration or utilisation, not vented to the atmosphere.

“OCCS is deemed a viable way to effectively reduce emissions for tank-to-wake, which can benefit more on hydrocarbon fuels,” ABS said.

 

Commodity transport

ABS also made predictions about how transport of oil, gas, iron and box containers will change over the next 25 years in its latest ABS Outlook report.

It foresees transport of oil and iron could decline by 50 per cent between 2025 and 2050. Oil demand will reduce due to a move to electric cars, and iron demand will reduce due to an increase in recycling of scrap iron, which can be done close to the market.

However, LNG transport is expected to increase from 400m tonnes in 2022 to 750m tonnes in 2040. Container volumes will increase, and other dry bulk cargoes will not change.

There will be a new maritime market in ships to transport liquid CO2 from capture sites to storage or utilisation sites.


Grimaldi

Also speaking at the London event organised by ABS, Emanuele Grimaldi, President and Managing Director of Grimaldi, and chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), noted that while the industry has “set the course” for decarbonisation, “we need to know the direction and speed we are in.”

The International Chamber of Shipping has particular concern about the 2040 checkpoint, which is “less than 20 years away”, with a need to cut total greenhouse gas emissions from shipping by 70-80 per cent.

An important part of getting there is finding ways to reduce the cost gap between conventional and ‘alternative’ fuels, he said.

 

 

 

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