A 4-stage test engine, with 4 giant pistons, may have the potential for the shipping industry and the global supply chains that depend on it.
“We took an internal combustion engine and replaced it,” said Brian Østergaard Sørensen, head of studies and progression at MAN Energy Solutions, while in an open-air studies lab in Copenhagen, Denmark.
MAN Energy Solutions is one of the world’s leading designers of advertising boat engines. At the Copenhagen control site, Sørensen’s team is experimenting with other carbon-free and carbon-neutral fuels to see how effective they can be at generating the immense force to move containers. Ships and bulk carriers across the world’s oceans.
The shipping industry is responsible for 3% of all global greenhouse fuel emissions, an amount equivalent to what Germany emits annually. But worldwide, 99% of ships currently run on fossil fuels, such as fuel oil and marine diesel.
“We want to look for tactics to rebuild existing ships,” Sørensen said.
The upcoming COP27 meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, taking place from 6-18 November, is expected to address the demanding decarbonisation situations facing the shipping industry in a much greater way than in the past. It is expected that the entire sector will be encouraged, driven and even cajoled to set a more ambitious timeline for decarbonisation and set targets to meet along the way.
“We are in a complicated transition [to cleaner fuels], but there is a willingness to do it,” Sørensen said. “For us, the praise is that our generation will stand the test of time. “
In one part of the MAN lab, senior research engineer Julia Svensson examines vials containing clear liquids that represent some of the green fuels vying for eventual industry supremacy.
Biomethanol, which can be synthesized from any biomass, such as crops, is a leading competitor.
“Biomethanol is booming, and I think that’s where we deserve to go if we need to go green,” Svensson said.
Ammonia, which may be slightly less expensive to produce than methanol, is a competitor.
The shipping industry’s regulator, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), has set itself the disappointing target of halving greenhouse fuel emissions by 2050. To meet the Paris Agreement’s global warming target of 1. 5°C, emissions from transport would need to be completely eliminated by 2080.
Knowing this, many in the industry are calling for greater ambition, driven through suppliers and consumers who need to see supply chains of greener practices.
Copenhagen-based Maersk, until recently the world’s largest container carrier for the past 25 years, has set itself one of the industry’s most ambitious decarbonization goals. It aims for net-zero emissions by 2040 across all its operations. For this, it has ordered 19 new giant vessels powered by carbon-neutral engines and powered by methanol.
“I think what we want to see now is for IMO to review this total decarbonization purpose [by 2050],” said Ingrid Sidenvall Jegou of the World Maritime Forum, a nonprofit that seeks to mentor industry players and foreign regulations. towards net zero.
In September, he co-authored a progress report on efforts to expand new fuels, ships and facilities. The forum’s goal is to have 5% of all shipping fuel carbon-free by 2030.
This date is a “tipping point” after which the industry crosses a critical threshold and the adoption of blank technologies becomes easier.
“There will be economies of scale and production prices will go down, as was most widely noticed in renewables,” Begou said.
However, the report’s pessimistic conclusion was that progress towards the 5% target was only “partially on track”.
Although there are now more than two hundred international pilot projects committed to carbon neutrality in shipping, primary investments in services such as fuel production and garage are desperately needed.
The staggering total value of processing, at the industry level, is estimated at between 1 trillion and 1. 4 trillion US dollars.
Along with uncertainty about targets and what fuel will eventually be the norm, the shipping industry has failed to find common vision on how to pay for the transition, specifically, the value of putting on carbon.
Two small Pacific countries, the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands, which are affected by rising sea levels, have proposed a carbon tax of US$100. per ton to burn polluting fuels.
The International Chamber of Shipping, one of the representative shipping companies, has proposed a carbon tax of a meager $2 per tonne.
A proposal through Japan would see a global carbon tax starting in 2025. It would start at $56 per ton, and the cash would be reinvested in the shipping industry to build infrastructure for a carbon-free future.
Alan McKinnon, a professor of logistics at Kuehne University of Logistics in Hamburg, Germany, says resistance comes from small countries, such as Panama, with an over-reliance on shipping and considerations about the economic consequences of a carbon tax.
“They’re very concerned that it could harm their interests,” McKinnon said.
The European Union did not wait for the IMO to take a resolution and announced that starting next year, ships calling at European ports will have to start contributing to the bloc’s emissions trading scheme, which serves as a carbon tax.
“When I was at the COP [Conference of the Parties] last year in Glasgow, a lot of other people were saying we had to get to 0 by 2050,” McKinnon said. “And to get there, you have worthwhile incentives: you want a carbon price. “
In a bid to triumph over disagreements and build momentum, 22 nations gathered at the Glasgow convention to sign the Clydebank Declaration. The goal is to create “green corridors” to inspire ports and shipping companies to build or improve their services along express routes where new, greener fuels will be produced and stored.
In Canada, the Port of Vancouver said it is exploring features with the U. S. ports of Seattle and Juneau, Alaska, to create a shipping address for the cruise shipping industry where “zero-greenhouse emission fuel shipments can succeed,” according to a released statement. through the port.
But while the United States and many European countries signed the declaration, major maritime nations such as South Korea, China and South Africa did not.
The burden and time needed for costly investments to pay for themselves remain the main hurdles for many emerging countries, though some experts expect the $1 trillion bill to be manageable.
“The premium [for consumers] will be low,” said Bo Cerup-Simonsen of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for zero-carbon shipments in Copenhagen. The non-profit center for studies and progression has been very concerned about the promotion of new green technologies.
“We typically apply an additional charge of less than 1% [on goods being shipped],” he said. The challenge, he says, is having proper regulation to allow prices to be distributed along the chain of origin.
Environmental activists have focused intensely on shipping industry practices in the past, for the use of high-sulfur fuel and poor protective practices that lead to oil spills. Some advocates have little confidence now that the industry will do more to mitigate climate change.
“It’s like putting cats together to get every nation in the world to agree on anything, but we have to agree,” said Roc Sandford of the U. K. -based climate advocacy organization Ocean Rebellion. , call for all shipped goods will have to fall.
“A lot of stuff gets shipped around the world and then returned,” Sanford said, suggesting global origin chains want to be simplified.
He said drastic relief in fossil fuel production would take much of the global tanker fleet out of the equation.
“We want to [phase out fossil fuel production] very temporarily and that would account for 40 percent of the shipment,” Sandford said.
Alan McKinnon, the logistics expert, who improves the power of shipping operations, from slowing ships to consume less fuel to loading them more successfully, is key to reducing the industry’s carbon footprint.
“After COVID, many corporations [targeting] the resilience of their supply chains are contemplating shortening their supply chains and, perhaps, in the long run, spend less on shipping containers offshore than they do lately,” he said.
The shipping industry’s efforts to be greener came much later than other parts of the transport sector; For example, electric cars are becoming commonplace and many jurisdictions have deadlines to stop fossil fuel car sales.
While there has been promising progress on the high seas, McKinnon says the industry’s task remains a challenge.
“[Ships] can have a lifespan of 30 or 40 years and the shipping replacement rate is slow. So this transition to low-carbon shipping will take some time. “
Foreign correspondent
Chris Brown is a foreign correspondent in CBC’s London office. Previously in Moscow, Chris has a hobby for wonderful stories and has traveled Canada and the world to locate them.
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