How to Decarbonize your Vessel
A roadmap to making your vessel carbon neutral (or even zero-emission)
Decarbonizing a vessel is a combination between the right technology, affordability and behavior. Depending on vessel size, willingness of the crew and the funds available, decarbonizing your vessels might be easier than you think. The difficult part is usually to determine what works for your unique asset, as there are currently 93,161 vessels worldwide that all need a different approach. You might be more than willing to decarbonize, but you might not know how. To help you get started on your decarbonization journey, we help you answer the main questions:
“What can you do, how can you do it and how much does it cost?”
Real-life examples and lessons learned from several vessel classes are included at the end, from which you can pick one that resembles your own vessel. Is it still not what you are looking for? Do you need more help? Or would you like to share your experience? Ask our Community!
1. What can you do?
> Choose from the following zero-emission technologies
The shear amount of zero-emission technologies and their impact can be overwhelming. We have made a selection of most promising technologies from most ship classes, in which we focus on retrofitting. At the moment, there are about 7 technologies identified by Mr. Sustainability that play a key role in decarbonization. These are Alternative Fuels, Batteries, Wind-Assisted Propulsion, Shore Power, Hydrogen, Floating Solar and On-Board Carbon Capture and Storage.
These technologies are based on our several years of experience in decarbonization and ranked (roughly) in order of decarbonization potential, maturity and availability. For each technology, the estimated minimum and maximum amount of CO2 reduction is shown. The "T" on top shows the absolute extremes than can be reached for specialized cases or classes, but this cannot be generalized. For example, fully electric vessels virtually eliminate all emissions but this is usually only reserved for newbuilds.
This graph shows that for almost all vessels, a combination of technologies is required to fully reduce carbon emissions. Furthermore, alternative fuels (in combination with hydrogen) and batteries are by far the most important technologies for carbon reduction of (sailing) vessels. If you would like to know which technologies are most suitable for your own class, scroll down below for a ranking of technologies per class.
2. How can you do it?
> Gather information, technical specs, standards and examples from Mr. Sustainability and others
Once you have determined which technologies suit you best, read up on how you can use these technologies on board of your vessel in our insights section. Below are the links to each of these technologies' pages on Mr. Sustainability, which include frequently asked questions, and overview of ongoing projects, vessels, stakeholders, technical specs and standards as well as a indication of possible costs. In addition, there are links to other sources such as DNV or Lloyds. Finally, there is always the option to ask your questions on our sustainable community, filled with experts who have experience with these technologies and might just know the answer that you seek.
7. On-Board Carbon Capture and Storage
> Start small and implement easy things first
Make yourself easy. Do not be frightened by costly measures or alarmed by the challenges posed by zero-emission technologies. Adhere to a 'blitzkrieg' strategy: Avoid strongpoints and tough challenges and apply the easy things and quick wins first that require very little or no investments at all. Make it simple, easy and fun. Examples of 'easy' measures to start your journey include:
- Bunker only 1 metric ton of biofuels and learn about the costs and supply chain for yourself.
- Hire a small battery or hydrogen generator from SKOON or CMB for just a week and see for yourself how it works.
- Buy 1 solar panel and install it on your ship to power your airfryer.
> Learn, improve and share your experience on our community
You will learn along the way that some things work, and some things do not. However, what does not work for you could work for others and vice versa. That is why we need to share lessons learned.
We believe strongly in sharing our experiences and learning from each other. That includes learning from each other's mistakes. We also believe to share openly and freely what can be shared, which is why we have started Mr. Communability, the sustainability community for the offshore industry. This community is dedicated to sharing experiences and applying lessons learned from or to others.
As every vessel is unique, we see no commercial advantage in not sharing lessons. Everyone will need to figure this out for themselves, their own vessels, crews and companies. By sharing what works, and what doesn't, we create win-win scenarios and new opportunities for business. It is a tide rising all boats. For example, the shore power project in the Calandkanaal by Heerema, Eneco and Port of Rotterdam not only ensured the reduction of almost 15.000 [mT] of carbon emissions annually. It also opened up business cases never thought about before by Eneco and Port of Rotterdam, which now seem to lead to millions in investment opportunity.
Click here to go to the community and share your experiences.
3. How much does it cost?
> Use this table to determine costs (and gains!)
We are continuously running lifecycle analyses to make costs insightful for your. Below is an estimate (!) of lifecycle costs for each key zero-emission technology. These are under continous development. We will narrow down these costs in terms of CAPEX and OPEX per vessel type in the future to help you even further. Check out the costs sections for these technologies on our insights page, or go to Mr. Communability to connect with potential partners, stakeholders and investors.
The blue boxes show the lower and upper bound in which lifecycle costs will be with a high likelihood. The "T" shows the upper extremes. For example, we can state with 80% certainty that premium costs for alternative (bio)fuels will range from nothing (which is the case for some biofuels from Goodfuels in Rotterdam) to up to €50 premium in Rotterdam (GTL with carbon credits for example). There are extremes however in which you could end up paying €200 per mT saved or more, which can be the case for HVO in some places in the world. As you can see, there are also quite some fuel-saving technologies that will actually positively impact your bottom line. We can guarantee with almost absolute certainty that solar panels on board will always save you fuel, but your situation can always be different.
Ship Class
Key Zero-Emission Technologies
Examples
> References
Mr. Sustainability adheres to the below figure, from a literature review by Evert A. Bouman, Elizabeth Lindstad, Agathe Rialland, Anders H. Strømman (Transportation Research Part D, 2017). It provides an overview of virtually all known carbon reduction measures using boxplots of the CO2 reduction potential. From the below overview, a combination of reduction measures can be applied to any vessel. This graph is supported by IMO, which has made a graphical overview for several measures as can be seen below.
Such an exercise has been done for Heerema’s Sleipnir (link), the largest crane vessel in the world. This is elaborated upon in our blog Making the Impossible Possible. This ‘cafeteria model’ methodology of cherry-picking measures can be applied to any vessel. We are working on a tool to help you pick from these options and work out what works for you. For now, ask our community for all your questions.
