This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.
For decades, the world’s commercial ships have depended on a fossil fuel so sticky and thick that it needs to be heated to around 150 °C just to get it to flow through a vessel’s innards. Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) is one of the dirtiest fuels out there. “It’s the last step of the [oil] refining process,” says Morten Bo Christiansen, head of the energy transition team at Danish shipping giant Maersk. “You could say, the bottom of the barrel.”
Yet now, as the International Maritime Organization (IMO)—the United Nations branch tasked with managing global shipping—implements new regulations intended to force the shipping industry to cut its sulfur and carbon emissions, HFO is on the chopping block. The new rules have decision-makers like Christiansen racing to figure out which of the myriad potential fuels of the future will ultimately replace it.
Part of Christiansen’s job, alongside dozens of colleagues, is to buy the fuel that powers Maersk’s hundreds of ships. HFO and other fossil fuels, he says, are already beginning to give way to cleaner alternatives.
In mid-2023, for example, a new container ship, the US $160-million Laura Maersk, began operating in the Baltic Sea. “It looks like any other container ship,” says Christiansen. But the Laura Maersk has never run on oil. Instead, it’s powered by methanol. There are lots of different ways of producing methanol, and not all are environmentally friendly. However, when sustainably sourced, such as by capturing gas produced at landfill sites or through various processes powered by renewable energy, methanol can be significantly less polluting than fossil fuels. The Laura Maersk is already plying the waters off northern Europe, and more than 200 other ships capable of running on…
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