CShips transport almost everything. The world wants it more. As a result, ships are getting bigger, and transportation channels, port facilities, and cargo handling cranes are getting bigger. "Around the world they are expanding, expanding and building more and more terminals to accommodate more and more vessels," says Captain Erduan Murtaza on his nearly 10 million cubic meter bridge. Feet container ship,Gerda Maersk.On the outside of the windshield, thousands of containers painted in dull primary colors are stacked at 9 levels on the deck. On land at the container terminal in Elizabeth, NJ, many of these steel boxes spread as far away as the disassembled debris of the Giants' playset.
When built in 2009, theGerdaMaerskwas one of the largest container ships in the world. It is about a quarter mile long and has a depth of 7 stories. But even this monster has been dwarfed by the expansion of the industry. It can only carry half the cargo of some recently launched ships. Mr. Multaza states thatgrowth is only acceleratingso what do you do? Start shopping online, "he says. "[Everything] must go through these boxes."
Shipping proponents like to refer to the growth of this sector as a measure of global economic well-being. They also trumpet the environmental goodwill of shipping, citing statistics showing that ocean-going vessels are one of the most energy-efficient ways to move goods around the world. However, these vessels may be less carbon intensive than cargo planes, for example, but still account for almost3% of the world's CO2 emissionsand how that changes. I don't know if it will be done. While sectors such as automobiles and power grids are relatively easy to convert to renewable energy, due to physics constraints, there is currently no easy way to move millions of tonnes of cargo across the ocean without fossil fuels. .. And, despite the improvement in ship energy efficiency over the last few decades,overall emissions continue to increaseas the industry expands. Last year alone, the industry's CO2 emissions surged by nearly 5%.
Danish shipping giant Maersk, Murtaza's employer, says he is investing in a solution: Traditionally as part of a plan to reach net zero emissions. Replace the fuel in so-called green methanol. In 2040, and hopefully, we will begin to orient the global shipping industry's emission trajectory in the right direction.
Cranes in Elizabeth, NJ, 2020 , The blockade slowed the economy, so I was idle. The following year, transport emissions increased by 5%
Mark Lennihan—AP
Today, facilities around the worldProduces about 100 million tons of methanol annually, most of which is derived from fossil fuels, most of which is used as an industrial raw material for plastic production and the like. Powering ships using fossil fuel-based methanol, as some pilot projects did,climatically simply burns natural gas and coal. There is not much difference with. Instead, Maersk is trying to power the ship with green methanol.
There are two versions used by Maersk and other versions in the industry. One is biomethanol, which requires the extraction of molecules from biomass such as crop waste. The second is electromethanol (e-methanol), which is produced by combining hydrogen and CO2 produced from water using renewable energy. These "green" forms of methanol release CO2 on combustion, both of which were already sucked out of the atmosphere by either plants or machinery when the methanol was produced. It is the same CO2. This means that the overall contribution to the ship's carbon dioxide emissions is much less than using new fossil fuels pulled from the ground.
From mid-2021 to early 2022, Maersk ordered 12 new cargo ships from South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries in 2024 and 2025 that could be transported by methanol. fuel. Shortly thereafter, Maersk signed a contract to secure enough green methanol to begin the voyage. The new vessel accounts for only about 2% of Maersk's global fleet, which is the first step towards decarbonization of the world's second-largest shipping company and leads Maersk's climate change efforts. Tembo Christiansen says. This means continuous replacement of unusable vessels with vessels that can navigate with methanol or other fossil fuel alternatives. “It was really like a chicken or the egg,” says Christiansen. "No one was building a green ship because there was no green fuel, but no one was producing green fuel because there was no ship to burn it. This is an attempt for us to break it.
Danish wind and solar power company European Energy is one of the players planning to produce its fuel. We are building what is being claimed as the world's firstlarge-scale electronic methanol plantin Casso, Denmark. Maersk plans to purchase half of its production when production begins in the second half of 2023. The plan is the brainchild of Soren Knudsen Kær, a former engineering professor at Aalborg University who is working with European Energy at the new facility. The goal is to help solve critical challenges in decarbonized transport. In short, it's a way to store, transport, and prepare large amounts of energy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, without fossil fuels, when you need it most. Due to its very high energy density, it occupies relatively little space and weight compared to other possible power sources.
When it comes to storing green energy, thebatteryis often the most efficient approach, but it's too big for airplanes and ships. Hydrogen is another option: Producers use huge electrolyzers and renewable energy to separate hydrogen from water, and ships burn the hydrogen directly or use fuel cells. Releases the stored energy. However, according to Kær, hydrogen gas is difficult to store and transport because it requires a lot of energy to compress to a manageable amount. Around 2018, Kær began developing a pilot facility that combines large amounts of hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form e-methanol. This allows energy to be stored in liquid rather than gas, eliminating the need to transport it in high pressure tanks. A few years later, European Energy joined in to support a much larger version of the project.
Maersk is not the only one paying attention to methanol. CMA CGM, the world's third-largest container ship, ordered six new methanol-powered container shipsin June, while Swedish shipper Stena Bulk was a Swiss chemical company. We are building a tankerpowered by Proman andmethanol. "Going back a year and a half, we had the opportunity to go to the shipping conference and make a presentation at the final panel on the final day," says Greg Dolan, CEO of the industry's Methanol Institute. Industry group. "Now there is a lot of interest in methanol. There is a keynote slot."
Shanghai remote surveillance platform worker, home of the world's largest port
Ding Ting—Xinhua / Getty Images
Despite the current epidemic,green methanol has a long-term handicap. Since methanol is a carbon-based fuel, it requires a large amount of carbon to make it. Fossil fuels are a great place to find raw materials, but they continue to pull them from underground and slowly cook the Earth while adding them to the climate system in the form ofnew carbon dioxidechallenges are already circulating. To find carbon that does not tilt the overall carbon balance any further. That sounds simple, but after all, the problem is that there is too much CO2, but pulling that CO2 out of the coal-fired power plant's chimney is an extra CO2 from fossil fuels that makes the ship from pollutants. The air used to burn the produced methanol. "We use carbon again, but it's still released into the atmosphere," says Alangepert, a research scientist studying the methanol system at the University of Southern California. Emitting CO2 directly from the atmosphere may seem like a good idea, but such techniques (usually called "direct air capture") are expensive and energetic. Consume in and some experts do not think it is possible. It is cost-effective.
Instead, the current best option is to find abiogenic carbon sourceof plant or animal origin. Biomass that can be converted to biomethanol by a chemical process, or CO2 released from combustion, or other organic material that can be combined with a fermentation plant or hydrogen to make e-methanol. For example, European Energy's e-methanol project relies on agricultural waste such ascow dungto supply CO2. The problem is that there is not enough sustainable biogenic CO2 sources to make more than some of the methanol needed to decarbonize the transport. For example, according to Faig Abbasov, director of transportation programs for the environment, Europe estimates 2050, even if it makes the most of the projected use of biomethane (one of the best sources of bio-CO2). It accounts for only about one-fifth of transportation demand. Think tank transport&environment. "Basically,cows aren't enough," he says.
In the long run, there are non-methanol options suitable for transport decarbonization.In a sense, hydrogen is needed to make methanol, so it's a simpler solution, but as Kær said, it's difficult to store hydrogen. Still, some experts believe that the best approach is to try to solve the storage problem rather than looking for an alternative.
Others believe that ammonia may be a good option. Like methanol,ammonia is already produced in large quantities in many industrial applications, such as fertilizer productionToday, most of it comes from fossil fuels in processes that release large amounts of CO2. doing. However, it can also be produced from reproducible hydrogen, which solves the same energy storage problems as methanol, but does not limit the carbon supply of e-fuels. However, leaks of ammonia can be life-threatening for humans and marine organisms (methanol is also toxic, but the risk of leaks is much lower). For example, Maersk's Christiansen fears that some ports may ban ammonia because of its toxicity. Ammonia engine technology is also far more advanced than methanol. "Even if we solve all our safety and environmental challenges, we are nearing the end of the decade before we can emit ammonia," he says. "It's too late for us."
Some experts mean that the limitation of e-methanol is a dead end of transportation, making biofuel power plants the majority of the company. Larger green transitions, which say they are useful only in small corners of the industry, like countries planning to create a ready-to-use source of bioproduced CO2 for the production of electronic methanol. And if shippers invest in what looks like an easy solution right now, instead of tackling the more ambitious ammonia or hydrogen options entirely, they are in the long run. Anchor in the form of a ship that relies on methanol fuel, which becomes increasingly expensive as it becomes more difficult to find carbon of biological origin, which can waste time and resources and cost the economy.
For now, Christiansen believes that methanol-powered vessels have a lot of biomass to start transporting cargo across the world's oceans. He agrees that the discovery of biological CO2 in the future will be difficult, but if the technology is realized, it will probably require direct air capture, but he believes that methanol is currently the best option. increase.
Despite Maersk's move, the truth is that large-scale international warrants have not really made much climate progress. Some companies do almost nothing. Regulations are urgently needed to force a shift across the industry, but the power to do so is largely in the hands of theInternational Maritime Organization(IMO). club. International shipping is not covered by the Paris Agreement, and IMO then Secretary-General Koji Sekimizu should not actually ask shippers to set an emission cap for key negotiations in 2015. Said.
However, some countries are promoting new green transport ahead of this year's annual climate negotiations in Egypt. On June 17, the Biden administration announced that the United States and Norway would launch agreen transport challenge at COP27According to the White House, the goal is to "completely decarbonize by 2050." Help us lead the international shipping sector to a credible path for the last decade. ”
Scientists say that humanity will be up to 2050 to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Warns that its emissions need to be completely zero. IMO's current climate strategyonly requires that emissions be cut in half by 2050. The interests of the shipping industry and other companies have had a disproportionate impact on IMO policy, and in some countries private sector representatives have been appointed as delegations. "The name of the game," and Brian Comer, who heads the International Council on the Marine Program for Clean Transportation, said "as late as possible." Maersk is not without responsibility in that regard. It countered the proposal to limit the speed of the ship. (Maersk's representative says the company endorsed another proposal to reward more efficient vessels. The IMO eventually adopted a jumble of measures that included aspects of both proposals.)
Decarbonization of ships may also have more serious problems. The tacit assumption that everything about transportation can continue to grow forever. Analysts predict that international transport will nearly triple by 2050, and some environmentalists may say it's simply incompatible with a livable planet. For one thing, it makes the task of reducing the industry's environmental footprint much more difficult. Second, even if the transportation fuel could be completely decarbonized, it does not take into account the emissions generated by the large amount of new materials needed to continue the industry's growth.ConcretePorts,Steel hulls and containers, andplastic for the endless tide of disposable consumer goodsthat fill them. "We've got this huge carbon bubble. Bigger ships are driving more [goods]," said a policy officer at Brussels-based NGO Seasat Risk. One Lucy Gilliam says. "Where does this stop?"
For Gilliam, the answer is clear. To reduce transportation emissions, we need to reduce the demand for overall transportation. That is, people need to stop buying things to throw away immediately. But most people don't feel like wondering what their habits have to do with the growing fleet of super-sized vessels that roam the world's oceans.
"These plug-in electric cars are peanuts compared to this big boy," said Captain Murtaza beforeGerdasteamed on an 11-day trip from New Jersey. say. Suez Canal. "Of course, I carry 11,000 containers at a time, but still, when I'm burning, I'm burning." He heads for his window and beyond Newark Bay. I will show you by gesturing. There, more than 12 huge ships are moored on certain days. "It's not just me. Look at our numbers."
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Alejandro de la Garza (alejandro) . Delagarza @ time .com