A container ship on its way from South Korea to Denmark is using methanol fuel that reduces emissions – although future fuels may be greener.
The world’s first container ship powered entirely with “green methanol” fuel is halfway through its maiden voyage from South Korea to Denmark. The voyage marks a growing push in the shipping industry to use methanol to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which make up about 3 per cent of global emissions.
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| Digital illustration of Maersk’s container ship powered by green methanol Maric design/Maersk |
The electric blue, 172-metre-long ship is the first of 25 methanol-powered container ships ordered by the Danish shipping giant Maersk. The ship can run on both methanol and conventional fossil fuels, and is the smallest on order with a carrying capacity of up to 2100 6-metre-long containers.
It departed from Ulsan, South Korea, in late July and just finished refuelling in Port Said, Egypt. It is now sailing west through the Mediterranean, according to the website MarineTraffic, and heading for Copenhagen, Denmark, for a naming ceremony in September. The ship will reportedly be called the “Laura Maersk”, although the name won’t become official until the ceremony.
All the methanol used for the ship’s maiden voyage was produced using methane captured from landfills or from other biological sources, such as manure, according to OCI Global, the US company that supplied the fuel. Using this “biomethanol” means the journey will produce about 65 per cent less CO2 emissions than if it had used conventional fuels, according to Maersk.
While there are already a number of other ships that can run on methanol, Maersk says this is the world’s first voyage to be powered entirely by biomethanol.
“This is a strong signal to global ship fuel markets that green methanol demand is rapidly on the rise,” says Mikkel Elbek Linnet at Maersk. He says that other shipping companies have also now ordered more than 100 additional ships that can run on methanol.
Currently, nearly all of the 110 million tonnes of methanol produced globally each year are made using natural gas. Even then, methanol emits far less air pollution than conventional fossil fuels, reducing emissions produced by around 10 per cent, says Charlie McKinlay at the University of Southampton in the UK. But greater emissions reductions depend on how the methanol is made before it reaches the ship’s fuel tanks.
Biomethanol is better than methanol made with fossil gas for reducing emissions, but Tristan Smith at University College London says there will never be enough biomass available to make this fuel at the scale needed to power global shipping.
E-methanol made using hydrogen produced with renewable energy and captured CO2 is another option that would further lower emissions. Maersk says it plans to run the ship on what it says is carbon-neutral e-methanol produced at a plant in southern Denmark, once it begins sailing its regular route between Scandinavia and the Baltics. Although e-methanol can be made at larger scales in theory, Smith says there is no sustainable source of carbon for its production, and that it would require huge amounts of energy to make. “It doesn’t make any sense as a commercial solution,” he says.
Ammonia made with renewable energy is potentially a carbon-neutral alternative shipping fuel, and it could be produced at larger scales, says Smith. However, it is poisonous, and there aren’t currently any ships designed to run on the fuel. In the meantime, Smith says shipping companies – led by Maersk – are going with methanol. “Maersk are just impatient,” he says. “They want to be the first.”
Linnet says Maersk has not ruled out ammonia or other green fuels for the future, and methanol ships could be retrofitted to use other fuels. But he says green methanol is “the only solution this decade”.
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