The North and Baltic Sea - Building the "Silicon Valley" of Zero Carbon shipping
Updated: Feb 3, 2021
On October 28th we launched our report "TOWARDS NET ZERO" on aspecial event in Hamburg together with our partners from Amplifier.
The event featured talks by Simon Schofield from Bar Technologies presenting a concept for containerized energy and sails for cargo ships, Peter Due from Yara Birekland, presenting an advanced study for autonomous shipping, Roy Campe from CMB talking about soon-to-come hydrogen engines and Ulf Kanne from Transport Transformation discussing financial structures for advancing innovation.
In our presentation we discussed the results of our study where we distilled three areas for action that we need to do today, based on interviewing over thirty experts from the maritime industry over the last months, going through dozens of reports and evaluating a range of business cases:
Firstly, deploy fully electric and diesel/ electric hybrids at scale (new and as retrofits) on short distances up to ~100nm
Secondly, pilot hydrogen and ammonia for larger ships and the longer distances that cause about 90% of total global maritime emissions
Thirdly, develop new business and financing models for zero-carbon fuels
The transition to zero-carbon fuels will certainly be challenging.Essentially, it requires building entirely new value chains from fuel supply to new shipping engines as well as the supporting financing and business models – all within the coming 10-15 years.
At the same time, there is great opportunity, not only to radically improve the environmental footprint of shipping, but also economically.One of our interview partners said that he sees the North and Baltic Sea region as the ‘Silicon Valley of zero-emission technologies’ for the shipping sector. We think the ingredients are all there – a strong ecosystem of all relevant players across the value chain, organizations and individuals willing and capable to take on the challenge and supportive financial institutions and regulators.
The excitement for innovation was tangible at the engaged discussion with participants from industry, think tanks and regulators - now we need to use this momentum to develop pilot projects.
Stay tuned..