40% of the world’s 60,000 ships – which, incidentally, are all powered by fossil fuel – are used to transport fossil fuels.
PwC, Price Waterhouse Coopers have published an insight into the net zero challenge facing the shipping industry, citing that in 2022 CO2 emissions from shipping were just short of an all-time high (708Mt).
PwC’s article quoted Jeremy Nixon, CEO of ONE (Ocean Network Express) the 7th largest container carrier in the world. Nixon talked about the opportunities for his company, as well as the shipping industry as a whole, to migrate away from the use of fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives. Adopting alternatives has financial implications at present, but Nixon was optimistic that prices would fall as more shipping companies switched.
Nixon said ONE were investing in new ships designed to be converted to run on methanol. The new fleet would be ready to swap to the new fuel, once the source of the methanol was upscaled enough to provide a reliable supply.
The gist of what Nixon was saying seemed to be the whole of the shipping industry needs to move away from fossil fuels and if they all committed to greener fuels then market pressure would speed the development of sustainable alternatives. This industry-wide change would encourage investment in these technologies.
The two most promising new fuels, he said, were green methanol and green ammonia. Green hydrogen was discussed but it is less dense than both methanol and ammonia, and harder and more expensive to store in bulk.
99.9% of shipping is powered by fossil fuel. For the industry to reach net-zero by 2050, it is reckoned that 13% of shipping need to switch away from it by 2030 to meet the target.
In a podcast from Climate Now in 2022, Dr Bryan Comer, leader of the marine program for ICCT (International Council on Clean Transportation) said that if the shipping industry were a country, it would be the sixth largest emitter of CO2 in the world, just behind Japan.
Another frightening statistic is that 40% of the world’s 60,000 ships – which, incidentally, are all powered by fossil fuel – are used to transport fossil fuels. Imagine a world where we generate clean power and use it at source. In this fossil-based, pre-renewables era of notoriously dirty cargo ships, massive volumes of fossil fuels are burnt to move fossil fuels around, so they too can be burnt. Ships are often using one of the dirtiest types of fossil fuel available. It’s bunker fuel, a waste product from the oil industry. It’s filthy and it has little other use.
If the shipping industry didn’t pay the oil companies to take it away, the oil companies would have to pay to get rid of it. Which suggests that commercial shipping is subsidising the oil industry. It’s a bit like having 60,000 oil-fired power stations floating around where no-one can see them.
This vast industry is built on numbers that are beyond comprehension. 1.9 billion tonnes of crude oil shipped in 2018. A billion tonnes of CO2 emitted every year. A shipping fuel trade worth $150 billion. A hugely powerful industry with a value that makes it the sixth largest economy in the world. One that has also been slow to change – or to commit to the need to change.
Faced with the enormity of this problem, it may seem like there is nothing we can do.
But there is. You will buy something this week that has been shipped by sea, as 90% of everything made is – or has parts in it that are – shipped by sea.
So now is the time to start looking at how what you buy gets to you. And telling the companies you buy from to start looking at how they move stuff around, or you’re going to shop elsewhere.
Sounds like trying to turn a super tanker around with a dinghy, right? But if we all did it, there’d be a lot of dinghies. Captains of the super tankers would have to start changing course.