Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry is pushing ahead with developing more green vessel designs using methanol and ammonia as a fuel.
Katherine Si | Dec 05, 2023
Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry is the shipbuilding unit of the world’s largest integrated fleet owner Cosco Shipping, which has ordered 24,000 teu methanol dual-fuel newbuilds from the group’s yards.
“Currently, the shipping industry is experiencing tremendous change and these are bringing huge challenges to the owners, as the traditional emission reduction ways such as low-speed sailing cannot effectively solve vessel emission issues. We must use clean fuel and low carbon technology to promote the industry’s development, “said Liang Yanfeng, chairman of Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry, at Marintec 2023 in Shanghai.
Related: Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry to offer Anemoi rotor sails
Based on IMO 2050 emission target fossil and liquid clean fuels will be used for ocean going vessel propulsion for the coming decades. Shipping will hav a multi-fuel future, where fuel oil remains in use for around another 30 years.
The dual-fuel vessels have accelerated in number of the past two years and this definitely seen as a good way to promote the green development of shipping industry. The demand for methanol-fuelled vessels, especially for large size containerships is a starting point for the shipping industry to achieve decarbonisation and transformation, meanwhile, the use of ammonia as a ship fuel is also becoming popular, Liang continued.
Related: RINA AiP to Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry Technology for CCS
Green ammonia production could be scaled up to 2030 and become as cost effective compared to other synthetic fuels. Considering the feed stock and production process, green ammonia would be cheaper than green methanol.
As the largest integrated shipping company, Cosco Shipping has made a clear demonstration to shipping industry on decarbonisation and ordered the world’s biggest methanol duel-fuel 24,000teu contanerships at a total cost of RMB20 billion to be built by NACKS and DACKS part of the shipyard group.
“We are going to build more large size methanol containerships as well as large size ore carriers,” Liang said, “and we are actively developing ammonia-fuel vessel types.”
Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. Seatrade, a trading name of Informa Markets (UK) Limited.
TAGS: ASIA SUSTAINABILITY & GREEN TECHNOLOGY
