Nitrogen+Syngas 373 Sept-Oct 2021
30 September 2021
Maersk bets on methanol
“The question becomes where this methanol will come from…”
While the past couple of years have seen considerable excitement and momentum concerning the use of blue/green ammonia as a fuel, an announcement in August by Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world, has served once again as a useful reminder that ammonia is not the only candidate molecule. Maersk said on August 24th that it is ordering eight methanol powered vessels from South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries at a total cost of $1.4 billion. Each giant ship will have the capacity to carry 16,000 twenty-foot [container] equivalent units (TEUs).
Methanol had already been under consideration as a low sulphur shipping fuel following the tightening of IMO regulations on sulphur content of fuels that occurred in January 2020, and had been reported on in this magazine before (Nitrogen+Syngas 347, May/Jun 2017, pp18-20). However, with the prospect of the methanol being made from ‘green’ hydrogen and waste CO2 , it also has the potential to be a carbon neutral fuel for vessels, and it is in this guise that Maersk is sufficiently convinced about it as a green fuel to be willing to put up one and a half billion dollars. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2019 international shipping was responsible for approximately 2% of global energy-related CO2 emissions, and the IMO is working to decarbonise the global shipping industry by 2050. While ammonia has been one suggested pathway towards this, green methanol is another.
Maersk’s move follows its announcement earlier this year of a methanol-powered 2,000 TEU container ship to be launched in 2023 which will consume 10,000 t/a of green methanol, sourced via Denmark’s European Energy and its subsidiary, REintegrate, who will set up a facility to produce carbon neutral methanol for Maersk using solar electricity and “biogenic carbon dioxide”. However, the eight new ships – the first one is due to be launched in 2024, and another four in 2025 – will consume even more methanol. As they will replace older, less efficient vessels, Maersk says that once the whole fleet is operational it will save a total of 1 million t/a of carbon dioxide, and presumably consume almost as much green methanol. The question then becomes where this methanol will come from. The REintegrate facility will certainly not be sufficient, and Maersk has left its options open by saying that it “will operate the vessels on carbon neutral e-methanol or sustainable bio-methanol as soon as possible”, while building them with dual fuel engines that can also run on conventional low-sulphur marine fuels. Still, the knowledge of a guaranteed market for up to 1 million t/a of green methanol might be a spur to other developers even if Maersk does not take a direct hand in generating the fuel.
Maersk’s move is a bold one, but could it be just the beginning? The shipowner has a fleet of over 700 ships, and says that it wishes to maintain a fleet capacity “in the 4.0 to 4.3 million TEU range”, of which these ships would represent only 3.2%. The sky – or perhaps rather the sea – could be the limit for green methanol.
