Ecological transition
When will we see greener maritime transport?
Given the growing attention to environmental sustainability around the world, Canada’s marine and shipbuilding industry is actively exploring green shipping practices and green corridors.
As in other economic sectors, the Canadian shipping industry must invest in cleaner technologies, alternative fuels and the reduction of CO2 emissions. On the menu, green corridors, that is to say zero-emission maritime routes between two or more ports, and alternative fuels. Objective? Carbon neutrality by 2050. Overview of possible options.
Producing ammonia, methanol or synthetic methane with hydrogen takes things one step further, but producing enough green hydrogen to decarbonize the global shipping industry remains a daunting challenge. .
What about biofuels?
Plants are the source of most organic matter, and they take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. Thus, when they are converted into fuel to be burned, they are considered carbon neutral. In theory, these sources of biomethanol could be used to supply fuel to ships. But the global production of biomethanol is currently extremely limited and is estimated at only 0.2 million tonnes per year by the International Renewable Energy Agency.
That would be enough to power two large container ships. For your information, six petajoules is the amount of gas needed to power two or three large container ships. With the growing demand for zero-emission fuels, competition for organic feedstocks for fuel production will only intensify.
Production, the weak link in the chain
Sources of organic materials for fuel production, such as genetically modified algae, have not worked as expected, and concerns about the local ecology and climate change impacts of changes in the use of soils resulting from new plantings make these options less and less viable.
Considering the entire energy system, from fuel production to energy use on the ship, ship technology is not necessarily the weakest link in the chain. The most important shortcomings seem to be located upstream of the chain, in the fuel production part, and in the large-scale production of green hydrogen by electrolysis.
Current solutions will need to be significantly improved to achieve the necessary production volumes. If we want to use methane or methanol, we will also have to make major advances in the direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make e-methanol fuel.
It seems that extending our reliance on fossil fuels through carbon capture and sequestration, whether carbon dioxide or solid carbon, should be considered as the least bad interim option, but it extreme caution must be exercised to avoid unintentionally introducing more carbon-intensive fuels into the value chain, in pursuit of the dream of a marine fuel without GHG emissions, which may never be really done.