International shipowners need to significantly reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030 and will come under pressure to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Given that the industry currently depends almost entirely on fossil fuels for ship propulsion — and that every zero- or near-zero-carbon alternative faces serious headwinds — it won’t be an easy or low-cost transition. One pathway would be expanding the use of LNG as a bunker fuel in the near term and then shifting to alternatives like bio-LNG and synthetic LNG as they become more commercially available and economic. Another would be to use “green” or “blue” hydrogen, ammonia, or methanol. But there are challenges to each, not the least of which are the small volumes of non-traditional fuels being produced — and their high cost — and the need for new infrastructure both to produce and distribute them, as we discuss in today’s RBN blog.
Try (Just a Little Bit Harder), Part 2 – Very Low- and No-Carbon Alternatives to Old-School Bunker Fuels
