While the maritime industry is focusing on the development
of a new generation of vessels to achieve the decarbonization goals, one of the
big challenges is how to incorporate the existing global fleet to reduce
emissions and how shipowners can protect the current investments to ensure the
ships they are building today remain productive in the transition to a global
zero carbon fleet. The Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping
announced that it will lead a project with leaders from the industry to assess
the technical and financial considerations for converting current vessels into
future zero-carbon operations.
“In order to accelerate the investments in a zero-carbon
maritime value chain, we have to reduce the risk of stranded assets,” says
Claus Winter Graugaard, Head of Onboard Vessel Solutions for the Mærsk
Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping. “With this project, we will
address that challenge by providing clarity and overview of the operational
fuel and technology options, their associated environmental and financial
impact as well as their transition pathways.”
The project will assess conversion options and de-risk asset
investments by analyzing the emission reduction potential as well as the
techno-economic opportunity of converting vessels currently fueled by
fossil-based fuels to zero or neutral carbon fuel solutions. In addition, the
project will identify several technical modifications of relevance for today’s
new buildings to reduce the cost of future conversions, thus minimizing the
associated financial risk for shipowners.
“This is a vitally important piece of work for the
industry,” said Georgios Plevrakis, ABS Director, Global Sustainability. “We
are assessing the opportunities and consequences of converting ships from
fossil-based fuels to zero or neutral carbon fuel solution, which is something
every shipowner and operator urgently needs actionable insight into. This
project will turn the industry’s decarbonization ambitions into a series of
actionable steps, a pathway for each vessel type to carbon-free operations,”
The project partners, which include American Bureau of
Shipping, A.P. Moller – Maersk, MAN Energy Solutions, Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries, NYK Line, Seaspan Corporation, and Total, will address various
vessel types including containerships, tankers, and bulk carriers, and their
potential conversion from conventional fuel oil, or integration with more
recent fuels such LNG and LPG, to enable pathways with future solutions such as
Ammonia or Methanol as well as the application of onboard Carbon Capture and
Storage.
“To accelerate the transition to carbon-neutral or zero-carbon
fuels, it is not enough to focus solely on newbuilt dual-fuel vessels. We must
also look into retrofitting existing vessels in our fleet to operate on
carbon-neutral or zero-carbon fuels,” said Ole Graa Jakobsen, Head of Fleet
Technology, A.P. Moller – Maersk. “With our participation in this project, we
want to investigate retrofit possibilities for existing vessels enabling
dual-fuel operation on either methanol or ammonia as well as conventional fuel
oil.”
For each pathway, the related safety aspects will be
reviewed. The financial assessment will cover items such as conversion,
technology, and fuel costs as well as associated operating costs, while the
environmental assessment will, among other things, cover the Green House Gas
reduction potential over the lifetime of a vessel.
The critical nature of the project is highlighted by the
durability of the ships. For example, the industry trade association BIMCO
recently reported that the average age of bulkers extended to 28 or 29 years
before the ships were being sent to scrappers. Tankers typically operate for 20
or more years, while the cruise industry which has a record orderbook typically
operates its ships for 30 or more years.
“Through the long experience in developing highly efficient
and state of the art designed vessels, and also as a supplier of marine
machinery equipped to more than 50 percent of existing deep-sea vessels in the
globe, we, MHI Group are very glad to contribute to global environment
improvement not only for today’s urgent issues of EEXI and CII, but also
decarbonization of existing vessels through this challenging ‘Conversion
Optionality Study’ with the excellent partners,” said Tomoo Kuzu, Senior
Executive Vice President of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Marine Machinery &
Equipment Co.
The project is facilitated by the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller
Center for Zero Carbon Shipping and fully funded by the involved parties.