On Thursday, a new container cargo ship for the A.P. Moller-Maersk shipping company completed its first voyage, traveling from the South Korean shipyard where it was built to the company's base in Copenhagen, Denmark. There's nothing special about that—Maersk, the world's second-largest shipping company, regularly adds to its fleet of more than 700 ships.
"What is special about it is that it is not fueled by a fossil fuel," Morten Bo Christiansen, Maersk's head of energy transition, told Newsweek. The new vessel's maiden voyage could help chart a course to lower-carbon shipping.
"It is fueled by what we call green methanol," Christiansen explained. He said this fuel and the specialized vessels that use it will help get the company to its goal of net-zero emissions by 2040.
The company has another 25 similar ships on order, ones propelled by "dual fuel" engines which can burn green methanol or conventional fuel. As the green fuel supply grows and more ports convert to supply it, the thinking goes, the ships will already be on the water and ready to use it. Those vessels are scheduled to be in service within the next five years, and this first trip builds confidence in green methanol.
"We know it works," Christiansen said. "It just sailed halfway around the world!"
Marine shipping is vital to the global economy but vexing for the globe's climate. The massive ships traditionally rely on diesel and an especially dirty form of oil called bunker fuel, and the industry is responsible for about 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That might not sound like much, but it's on par with the emissions from the aviation sector, by some estimates, and if the shipping industry were a country, it would rank just above Germany in total emissions.
In July, the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for shipping standards, set a new goal to change that output. The IMO wants the industry to reach net-zero emissions by "close to" 2050 and made a commitment to adopt cleaner alternative fuels by 2030. Some climate advocates wanted a more ambitious target, but they're pleased that several companies, like Maersk, are pushing ahead with green fuels.
"The ships are coming, we have customers who want it," Christiansen said. "Now it's a supply problem. We need a hell of a lot—pardon my French—of this fuel."
And that is the big question about green methanol: Will there be enough?
Growing Green Methanol
Methanol, sometimes called wood alcohol, is often blended with gasoline and is usually produced using fossil fuels. What can make methanol "green" is a new method of production.
Maersk gets its green methanol from a company that captures the methane escaping from the rotting organic waste in landfills. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and preventing landfill emissions from reaching the atmosphere is a climate win in itself. The company then injects the captured methane into a natural gas pipeline connected to a facility that converts it to methanol.
Due to its size, Maersk has the capability to influence the shipping industry and the many companies that serve and depend on it. Energy transition analysts Newsweek spoke with praised Maersk for its action but had concerns about green methanol as a long-term solution.
"Maersk has been a first mover in the industry and should be commended for that, even when taking first steps that aren't perfect," said Jonathan Lewis, who directs transportation decarbonization at the Clean Air Task Force, a U.S. environmental group.
Cargo ships and tankers are very big and there are thousands on the seas, accounting for about 5 percent of the world's oil use. Replacing that oil will require low-emissions fuels in high quantities.
"Bio-methanol doesn't meet that challenge because it doesn't meet the scale," Lewis said. He pointed to research showing maritime shipping's need far outstripping projected supply, not to mention pressure from other sectors, such as aviation, also competing for various biofuels.
Aparajit Pandey, who leads shipping decarbonization work at RMI, an energy transition research group, had similar qualms about green methanol's potential growth curve.
"There's not enough biomass in the world," Pandey said. Other methods of production using green hydrogen could add to the green methanol supply, he said. But green hydrogen will also be in high demand for other industrial sectors, potentially limiting its availability and driving up prices.
A Sea Change
Despite those concerns, both Pandey and Lewis agreed that green methanol will likely play a role as other fuel alternatives are developed, and it is certainly a better choice now than sticking with fossil fuels. In the longer term, fuel systems using low-carbon ammonia look promising, they said, and companies are exploring options such as hydrogen, electric batteries and even high-tech sails to assist engines.
Whatever fuels win out, Pandey said, the industry is on a course for, well, a sea change on the scale of the historic shifts from sail to steam to petroleum. That will challenge not just the shipping fleets but also the ports and onshore infrastructure that support them.
"We are at the cusp of the next energy transition for shipping," he said. "It is going to be a complete revolution in the way we ship things."
Maersk's Christiansen said the flurry of innovation is exciting, but it also brings uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is toxic," Christiansen said, and he fears that indecision over new alternatives could cause companies to delay the switch from fossil fuels. He used a nautical analogy to explain the urgency of the energy transition.
"If your ship is taking on water, it's not like the captain calls a meeting on which pump would be ideally suited to solve the problem," he said. "If you have something that works, use it."
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