Gas Study News

The San Francisco Bay will soon have a new fossil fuel-free ferry floating in its waters, propelled completely by hydrogen fuel cells, and officials hope it heralds change on the high seas.Aptly named Sea Change, the 70-foot (21-meter), 75-passenger ferry will service multiple stops along San Francisco's waterfront. It was built at All American Marine shipyard in Bellingham, Washington, and was undergoing tests with the U.S. Coast Guard in nearby Puget Sound."We're here in the water…

The world's principal shipping organisation, representing around 80% of the world’s merchant tonnage, International Chamber of Shipping (ICS)  remains confident that shipping will improve its carbon efficiency by at least 40% by 2030 compared to 2008, in line with the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This follows important decisions made by the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 74) which met in London this week, said a press release from the world’s national shipowner association.ICS Secretary General, Guy Platten said: “We welcome the adoption of important new IMO regulations to strengthen and bring forward the application of the Energy Efficiency Design Index for several different types of new build vessel…

BIMCO, the largest of the international shipping associations representing shipowners, has proposed that the Fourth International Maritime Organization (IMO) Greenhouse Gas Study does not include unrealistically high gross domestic product (GDP) growth projections to predict future transport demand - and thereby emissions - of the shipping industry.“It is imperative that the industry – and the world – base discussions and actions to reduce emissions from shipping on credible and realistic projections. If not, we risk making the wrong decisions and spending resources ineffectively,” says Lars Robert Pedersen, BIMCO Deputy Secretary General.BIMCO…

Researchers at UCL Energy Institute use the methodology they developed for the Third IMO GHG Study 2014 and AIS data to estimate emissions from five different ship types and display this in a new interactive map that plots 250 million data points to show the movements of the world’s commercial shipping fleet over the course of the year 2012. The interactive shipping map has been developed by the UCL Energy Institute and London-based data visualisation and digital journalism studio Kiln, and was funded by the European Climate Foundation. It is based on hundreds of millions of individually recorded ship positions; plotting all of these at once shows the extraordinary extent of modern shipping’s reach.

AkzoNobel has announced the issue of more than 126,000 carbon credits worth more than $500,000 – the first to be awarded under the company’s landmark scheme for the shipping industry – which was developed in conjunction with the Gold Standard Foundation and the Fremco Group. Launched in 2014, the award-winning program rewards ship owners who convert existing vessels from a biocidal antifouling to a premium, biocide-free advanced hull coating such as AkzoNobel’s Intersleek –part of its International® brand – which is proven to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. On average, each of the 16 vessels included in the first issue achieved savings of just over 1,250 tons of fuel and 4,000 tons of CO2 per year, resulting in the award of 126,785 credits by the Gold Standard Foundation.

The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (“SSI”), a pioneering coalition of companies from across the global shipping industry, today released - ahead of discussions at COP21, which will be held in Paris from 30th November - a statement calling for the shipping industry to play its part in contributing towards the UNFCCC global CO2 reduction target. The Sustainable Shipping Initiative’s statement on CO2 emissions reads as follows: The Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI) calls on the shipping industry to encourage and support the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to act urgently in establishing the timely and progressive frameworks…

In advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December, the global shipping industry, as represented by the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), has launched some key messages to government negotiators, explaining the impressive progress the industry is making to reduce its carbon footprint. According to ICS, the global industry is already delivering carbon neutral growth having reduced total CO2 emissions by more than 10% since 2007, despite an increase in maritime trade. CO2 emissions from international shipping now represent just 2.2% of the world’s total CO2 emissions compared to 2.8% in 2007 (UN IMO Green House Gas Study, 2014).

Brazil's Subsalt Polygon, an offshore area that has already yielded some of the world's largest recent oil finds, may hold enough undiscovered petroleum and gas to supply the world's current oil needs for more than five years, researchers said. The Polygon, which covers most of Brazil's Santos and Campos offshore sedimentary basins, contains at least 176 billion barrels of undiscovered, recoverable resources of oil and natural gas (barrels of oil equivalent), according to study released last week by Cleveland Jones and Hernane Chaves of the National Institute of Oil and Gas (INOG) at Rio de Janeiro-State University. That is more than four times the 30 billion to 40 billion boe already discovered in the area.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have supported draft EU rules requiring ship-owners using EU ports to monitor and report CO2 emissions each year. The text establishes an EU-wide system for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, in order to improve the information about ship efficiency and emissions and to encourage reducing emissions and fuel consumption. Cargo owners and ship operators have been crying out for efficiency data, as the more cargo a ship can carry using the same amount of fuel, the more efficient, cleaner and cheaper the service. The new rules will apply from 2018 onwards to ships over 5…

The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has dismissed the recent claim by the European environmental lobby group Transport and Environment (T&E) that modern ships are somehow less CO2 efficient than those built over 20 years ago as ‘fanciful’. ICS said T&E bases its claims on a report it has commissioned from the respected consultancy CE Delft, but it has used the findings very selectively. Moreover, the actual data from which the report’s analysis is derived finishes before the worldwide implementation of the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI). This came into force in 2013 as part of the IMO mandatory package of CO2 reduction measures (amendments to MARPOL Annex VI).

Germanischer Lloyd's traditional recap of the latest session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of International Maritime Organization (IMO), focused on the surprising developments at the 65th session. MPEC 65, held in London in May, saw the IMO potentially postpone the introduction of the TIER III NOx limits contained in regulation 13 of MARPOL Annex VI, scheduled to come into effect in 2016, to 2021. Apart from the turn around on NOx, the 65th Session saw adjustments to the compliance timeline for the Ballast Water Convention (BWC)…

The Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed to circulate, via MEPC circulars, a package of interim and voluntary technical and operational measures to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) from international shipping and a work plan for its further consideration of market-based instruments to provide incentives for the shipping industry, when it met for its 59th session from 13 to 17 July 2009, at the IMO Headquarters in London. These measures are intended to be used for trial purposes until the Committee's sixtieth session (MEPC 60) in March 2010, when they will be refined, as necessary, with a view to facilitating decisions on their scope of application and enactment.