"The shipping industry has agreed to boost the global fleet's energy efficiency by at least 40% over the next decade and cut overall greenhouse-gas emissions from ship exhaust in half by 2050 compared with 2008 levels.
The problem is that there is no industry consensus yet on how green ships will be powered.
A cargo ship's lifespan is around 25 years and it takes around two years to build a cargo vessel. If the owners want to meet the deadlines without crashing their operating budgets they will have to start buying zero-emission vessels within a few years.
"We can build green vessels, but with no consensus on what kind of fuel will be used, the deadlines are just a theoretical exercise that can't be met," said a senior executive at Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co., one of the world's largest yards.
The focus on new fuel sources marks the biggest change in ship power since the sector switched from coal to the high-polluting heavy oil known as bunker more than 100 years ago.
The alternative fuels attracting the most attention and investment so far include ammonia and biofuels. The International Energy Association said this month that if the global energy sector reaches net-zero emissions in 2050, ammonia could account for 45% of energy demand from shipping.
The deadlines, set by the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations marine regulator in 2018, likely will become more stringent in 2023 when the body meets to review its strategy. Shipping services provider Clarkson Research Services Ltd. has estimated that it may cost the industry more than $3 trillion for ships to switch to new forms of power.
The choices by carriers will carry high stakes for shipping customers.
Shipping executives say they would seek to pass at least some of the costs of switching fuel sources along to cargo owners. That would drive up expenses in international supply chains for big retailers like Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., mining companies, and agricultural exporters moving raw materials in bulk.
"The tricky thing is that any zero-emission alternative is so far more expensive than oil," said Lars Robert Pedersen, deputy secretary general of Denmark-based shipping trade body Bimco. "If you have to run a ship on fuel three times as expensive as bunker oil, you are out of business. The freight rates won't cover it because cargo owners will go with the cheapest vessel."" [1]
1. Business News: Shippers Seek Consensus on Fuel
Paris, Costas. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]28 May 2021: B.6
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