Hurry Up And Wait?

The maritime industry is facing several substantive challenges, mostly driven by increasingly strict air emissions and climate legislation.

Among the broad spectrum of technology and fuel solution pathways presently available to ship designers, builders, owners and operators – synthetic fuels or, more specifically, renewable e-fuels – offer medium and long-term alternatives that can enter the market relatively quickly, if the certain challenges analysed below are suitably addressed.

On a Well-to-Tank basis, they also offer the potential to reduce the carbon output of their fleets to zero, or very close to it. Among the synthetic fuels, e-ammonia, e-hydrogen, e-diesel, e-methane and e-methanol are expected to see the largest uptake by the shipping industry.

Research undertaken by ABS and CE Delft for EMSA1 considered each fuel in turn, the latter three, namely e-diesel, e-methane, and e-methanol, are considered in more detail here.

Production and Sustainability
For these three e-fuels, direct air capture (DAC) is required for all the production pathways. Since DAC is an immature technology, none of the e-fuel production pathways is currently technologically advanced enough to enter the market. In addition, some of the production routes for these e-fuels consideration require further technological advancements to enter the market.

The volume of life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) and air-pollutant emissions generated by using e-fuels for shipping is considered significantly lower than those produced by fossil fuels. However, to produce e-fuels on a significant scale, large amounts of land are needed for wind and solar parks; this is becoming a challenge as it competes with agriculture and biodiversity conservation efforts.

In parallel, the construction and operation of wind farms may adversely affect the habitats of birds and bats. Areas with large amounts of sun, wind and water resources, and large areas with deserts are therefore seen to be suitable locations to establish large production of e-fuels. Lastly, materials for manufacturing wind and solar parks, electrolysers and other systems will also be required to produce e-fuels, potentially also generating negative environmental impacts.

Capacity and Availability
To ensure the large-scale production of e-fuels for the maritime industry, a tremendous expansion in the number of renewable-electricity plants, electrolysers, direct air capture plants and e-fuel synthesis plants will be needed. Whereas the projected global growth in renewable-electricity production could prove large enough to serve the demand for e-fuels
of the commercial fleet in 2030, electrolysis capacity, e-fuels synthesis capacity and DAC capacity are not expected to
keep pace.

Furthermore, the shipping sector will need to compete with all other sectors for the renewable electricity, green hydrogen and renewable carbon dioxide (CO2) required for e-fuels production.

The full transition of the global maritime sector to e-fuels will require a significant expansion of industry’s capacity to produce renewable electricity, electrolysers, DAC and e-fuels synthesis plants. An analysis of the required and available capacity for the different e-fuel production segments indicates that the largest restraint on expanding e-fuel production capacity is the development of DAC capacity.