PRESS / GENERAL RELEASES
Katharina Stanzel: Guest speech at the World Maritime Merchants Forum 2023
7 December 2023
INTERTANKO Managing Director Katharina Stanzel gave a guest speech at the 3rd World Maritime Merchants Forum 2023 held in Hong Kong, China (20-22 November 2023).
The full transcript is below:
Managing Carbon Reductions – an Oil Tanker Perspective
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests,
Climate change is a global challenge, affecting every one of us every single day. Decisions we take in our daily lives, influence our individual carbon footprints; and the efforts we make as individuals, from saving energy to choosing specific types of goods, transport or services with lower greenhouse gas emissions, collectively impact what society as a whole can achieve. Meanwhile, government policies and regulations should assist us to make sense of the complexities we face as a species and they usually also dictate what forms of energy are and will be available for our use.
INTERTANKO Members are tanker owners and experts in carrying liquid energy, today still often in the form of oil, gas or petroleum products, but increasingly also in the form of other cargoes e.g. for use in power generation. So while they face the same challenges as vessels in other sectors to decarbonise their operations and propulsion, they are at the same time looking to regulators and society in general, to understand what the future demand for energy will look like; and consequently what their future cargoes will be. Both aspects will affect the type of vessels they operate, what specifications will be required for new ships and where they are likely to trade.
Today, our tanker crews have decades of experience with handling dangerous liquids and gases as cargo, mitigating and dealing with anything from toxicity to flammability and explosion risks. However, neither they nor anybody else, have much experience of using some of these substances as fuels in ships’ engines. So the future fuel mix for shipping will present us all with significant operational and safety challenges, something we need to address urgently, jointly and with a focus on global rules for a global industry.
In addition, and apart from the potential dangers of some of the alternative energy sources, both when transported in bulk and when used as fuels, we need to address their real climate impact from production through distribution, storage and use. We have therefore joined a global review effort at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), undertaking a Life Cycle Analysis for shipping fuels by adopting a ‘well to wake’ approach.
If there is demand, tankers will transport whatever liquid or gaseous forms of energy society chooses to use. But as responsible global citizens, INTERTANKO Members are concerned that there currently are no ‘sustainable’ fuels available that are carbon free or have been produced using renewable energy to actually minimise their overall carbon footprint from production to use. While interim solutions can be found in the form of biofuels or LNG, they will not allow for a total decarbonisation of shipping.
INTERTANKO Members have for decades focussed on reducing their operational footprint. They are working tirelessly to increase their energy efficiency, both through operational as well as technological measures. They have changed and improved how their tankers are run, how cargoes are heated, vessel routed or arrival times coordinated to optimise speeds. They have adopted technologies on board and modified their vessels for maximum efficiency and now continue to do so by harnessing renewable energy through wind assist sails etc. They are fully committed and on track to deliver IMO’s 2030 GHG emission reduction targets.
BUT, they are concerned about the 2040 and 2050 targets, because reducing carbon intensity and emissions by over 70% will only be possible if fuels or energy sources with very low or zero carbon are available to ships as part of the solution. The production of such fuels is not in shipowners’ hands and the amount of renewable energy required to make truly carbon neutral fuels for shipping is enormous.
In a submission to IMO’s Marine Environmental Protection Committee, INTERTANKO analysed fuel options to meet agreed levels of ambition for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships. Apart from considering new nuclear technology in the form of molten salt reactors, which could reduce GHG emissions by 100%, the study highlighted that many ‘green’ fuels (i.e. fuels from renewable resources) have lower energy densities than their fossil counterparts, so would be required in larger volumes to provide the same power. To produce the 450 million tons of green ammonia required to power shipping for example, the green hydrogen needed would exceed existing global production 200 times and the process would use up the equivalent of 54% of global renewable electricity produced (in 2021).
It is doubtful (and non sensical) to suggest that 54% of the total global production of renewable energy should be used to reduce 2.8% of the global greenhouse gas emissions produced by shipping, especially when that energy could be used to make much more significant reductions in other sectors; sectors that in any case, will compete with shipping for the limited amounts of truly sustainable fuels becoming available.
And INTERTANKO Members are not waiting around for sustainable fuels, they are actively reducing their carbon footprints through other currently available means. They are also exploring necessary safety precautions that will keep ships’ crews safe during the transition. And they are urgently seeking the engagement of regulators, governments and other stakeholders to ensure the fuel part of shipping’s decarbonisation is prioritised.
Shipowners are contributing by adjusting the way they operate, build and equip their vessels. They honour their commitment to decarbonise shipping by trialling new technologies (which they cannot develop themselves) and by using alternative fuels (which they cannot produce themselves). They accept and actively support being regulated through global rules mandated by the International Maritime Organisation. But their success is co-dependent on the commitment of others to research and develop, mandate, regulate and adjust expectations to ensure charterers, ports, terminals, shipyards, engine and equipment manufacturers, class societies and other contributors to global maritime transport that are not directly regulated by IMO, engage and support this crucial transition.
For the sake of humanity and our planet, let’s do this together.
Thank you
