The Suiso Frontier, built by Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI), arrived on Friday from Kobe, in southern Japan, following a longer trip than the expected 16 days as the owners sought to avoid bad weather and rough seas, said a spokesperson for the venture, called the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC).

Led by KHI, HESC is a A$500 million ($360 million) project backed by the Japanese and Australian governments as a way to switch to cleaner energy and cut carbon emissions.

Hydrogen, seen as a path to decarbonizing industries that rely on coal, gas and oil, is key to Japan’s goal to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Australia aims to become a major exporter of the fuel.

Last year, the project started extracting hydrogen from brown coal at a 70 kg a day demonstration plant in the Latrobe Valley in the state of Victoria, about 135 km (84 miles) east of Melbourne, where brown coal mines have long fuelled some of Australia’s most polluting power stations.

The hydrogen is produced by reacting coal with oxygen and steam under high heat and pressure in a process that also yields carbon dioxide. The hydrogen is then trucked to a port site where it is cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius (minus 423 Fahrenheit), liquefying it for export.

If the partners eventually scale the project up to 225,000 tonnes a year, they plan to make carbon-neutral hydrogen by burying the carbon dioxide released in the process under the seabed offshore Victoria.

Partners in the Australian side of the project include Japan’s Electric Power Development Co (J-Power), Iwatani Corp, Marubeni Corp, Sumitomo Corp and Australia’s AGL Energy Ltd, whose mine is supplying the brown coal.

($1 = 1.3906 Australian dollars)

Source: www.marinelink.com

Image: www.pexels.com

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With about 90% of world trade transported by sea, global shipping accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions. So far, the industry has avoided the EU’s system of pollution charges.

Under proposals announced in July 2021, shipping would be added to the European Union Emissions Trading System (ETS) from 2023 phased over a three-year period, a move designed to spur emissions cuts from the sector.

A study by environmental group Transport & Environment (T&E) said that the proposals, which will be negotiated in Brussels this year, exclude ships below 5,000 GT (gross tonnage), which include small offshore supply ships that service the oil and gas industries. Fishing and military vessels would also be exempt.

T&E said the loopholes would mean that some 25.8 million tonnes of CO2 would not fall under the ETS, meaning that roughly 20% of the 130 million tonnes emitted annually by shipping in the bloc would be excluded.

Jacob Armstrong, sustainable shipping officer at T&E, said the proposals were “based on arbitrary loopholes” and would let “too many heavily polluting vessels off the hook”.

“The EU must rethink its shipping laws,” he said.

A European Commission official said the 5,000 GT threshold aimed “to minimize administrative burden for companies”, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, “without jeopardizing the objective to cover the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions from the sector”.

Peter Liese, the European Parliament’s lead negotiator on the ETS reforms, told Reuters that he was looking at the issue raised by T&E ahead of negotiations on the policy.

The Commission official said its proposal was aligned with the emissions covered by an existing regulation on the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions from maritime transport.

Ships above 5,000 GT accounted for around 55% of the vessels calling into EU ports and around 90% of the related emissions, the 2015 MRV regulation showed.

Ship owners will have to buy permits under the ETS when their ships pollute or face possible bans from EU ports.

Source: www.marinelink.com

Image: www.pexels.com

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Airseas said it has installed its Seawing system on the vessel Ville de Bordeaux owned and operated by Louis Dreyfus Armateurs. The ship, which is chartered by Airbus to transport major aircraft components between France and the U.S., will deploy the 500-square meter Seawing on its monthly transatlantic journeys from January 2022, conducting six months of sea trials and testing ahead of its full operation.

Airseas has received formal approval from classification society Bureau Veritas to begin operations at sea, following three years of close collaboration on the development and early trials of the Seawing.

According to Airseas, a French company founded in 2016 by former Airbus engineers, its Seawing system combines kite technology with an automated flight control system and can be safely deployed, operated and stored at the push of a button. It can be retrofitted on a ship in two days.

Airseas’ full size Seawing is a 1,000-square-meter parafoil which flies at an altitude of 300 meters, capturing the strength of the wind to propel the vessel. Based on modeling and preliminary testing on land, Airseas estimates that the Seawing system will enable an average 20% reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, the company said.

Vincent Bernatets, CEO and Co-Founder of Airseas, said, “A decade ago, we embarked on the ambitious project of channeling our unique aviation expertise towards creating a cleaner and more sustainable shipping industry. Today, I am beyond proud to see that vision becoming reality, with our first Seawing ready to make a tangible difference for our planet. This first installation marks a significant milestone not only for Airseas, but also for wind and other renewable propulsion technologies in general. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, the world needs to see a drastic reduction in carbon emissions now. In shipping, we can achieve this by using the full set of tools we have available to us today. Wind propulsion is one of these and will play an essential role in helping shipping achieve its much-needed decarbonization transition.”

Laurent Leblanc, Senior Vice President Technical & Operations at Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore, said, “This important milestone follows three years of close and fruitful collaboration on the development and early trials of the Seawing, supporting Airseas’ safety-first approach and validating the reliability of the system. As a class society, Bureau Veritas has a key role to play to support safe innovation, and this is why we have developed comprehensive rules on wind propulsion systems earlier this year. At BV, we are dedicated to help the maritime sector navigate the challenges of the energy transition, and we fully believe that wind propulsion technology represents a key opportunity to start decarbonizing the maritime sector immediately.”

Source: www.marinelink.com

Image: www.pexels.com

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