Maersk inks deal to secure supply of 'green' e-methanol for the vessel, targets 2023 launch

August 23, 2021: -Maersk said it had secured a supply of “green” e-methanol for what it described as “the world’s first container vessel operating on carbon-neutral fuel.”

On Thursday, in an announcement, the world’s largest container shipping firm said Denmark’s European Energy and its subsidiary, REintegrate, would set the facility to produce carbon-neutral e-methanol for use in a vessel designed to operate on it.

The plant would be able to produce almost 10,000 metric tons of e-methanol used by Maersk’s ship each year. The e-methanol will be made using renewable energy and biogenic carbon dioxide, with the production of the fuel for Maersk slated to get started in 2023. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency says that biogenic emission sources as “emissions that come from natural sources.”

Henriette Hallberg Thygesen, CEO of fleet and strategic brands at Maersk, said the agreement with European Energy and Reintegrate puts her company “on track to deliver on our ambition to have the world’s first container vessel operated on carbon-neutral methanol on the water by 2023.”

In simple terms, “carbon neutral” means an equal amount of CO2 removal offsets CO2 emissions. If something is carbon negative, meaning more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere than emitted.

The environmental footprint of shipping is huge. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2019, international shipping, a crucial cog in the economy of the world, was responsible for almost 2% of “global energy-related CO2 emissions.”

With major economies around the world that attempt to cut emissions to meet net-zero targets, the shipping sector will need to find new ways to reduce the environmental footprint of its operations.

In April, Brussels-headquartered campaign group Transport & Environment published a wide-ranging report on decarbonizing shipping. Among the different things, it stressed the importance of sustainable fuels in the future.

“To achieve full decarbonization of the shipping sector requires a new source of sustainable and renewable fuel,” its research said.

“Fuels produced by additional renewable electricity are the only scalable solution that fits the requirements of energy-dense, deployable, and clean fuels,” it added.