ABS: LNG to play a major role in maritime decarbonisation

American maritime classification society American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) has published a study that demonstrates LNG’s potential to help reach low carbon goals in the shipping industry.

The report named ‘Setting the Course to Low Carbon Shipping – View of the Value Chain’ is a detailed value-chain analysis of the greenhouse gas (ghg) footprint of the leading alternative marine fuels. It is the third in a series of outlook documents published by ABS to showcase the latest decarbonisation research.

The key message from the panel of industry leaders and a survey of more than 400 attendees at a webinar published in this report is that industry leaders are confident in LNG’s potential to help reach regulatory goals in the coming decades.

The study also showed that nearly 40 per cent of shipowners have still not implemented a decarbonisation strategy despite impending regulations.

The publication builds from prior issues which have identified LNG’s importance among the various alternative fuel options.

Almost nine out of ten respondents of the survey agreed that LNG has a key role to play in reaching IMO 2050. Among six fuel types, it landed the clear majority of the votes.

Of the respondents that had not yet put in place a decarbonisation strategy, 70 per cent reported that they had developed a clear understanding of their fleet’s environmental performance in relation to industry peers.

Main points of the study include:

• The short-term IMO measures, EEXI and CII, create a challenging landscape for many vessels within the global fleet;
• Life-cycle analysis identifies the need for green fuel production in order to have meaningful GHG emissions reduction from low and zero-carbon fuels;
• The required scale up of technology for green fuel production is significant before low and carbon-neutral fuels can be widely adopted by the global fleet;
• The adoption of such fuels and the overall decarbonisation of the marine sector will be enhanced by the global economy’s efforts to address the impact of climate change;
• Understanding global supply chains is critical to plan future fleet composition and renewal strategies.

ABS has simplified three fuel pathways to decarbonisation (light gas, heavy gas and bio/synthetic) to help owners’ decision-making.

Christopher J. Wiernicki, ABS chairman, president and CEO, said: “It’s clear the industry needs LNG as a transitional fuel to get us to 2030, it could also support the transition to zero-carbon and carbon-neutral fuels that are required to get us to 2050 such as Hydrogen. Owners of internationally trading ships are facing increasingly complex investment decisions as they try to navigate the most efficient course to the low-carbon future.”

“LNG remains the clear choice today because of its sheer scalability, growing availability and high technological readiness among low-carbon and low-emission fuels, where Hydrogen and Ammonia appear to be emerging as significant fuel types for tomorrow,” he added.

An on-demand version of the webinar is also available for download.