LNG shipping: international policies

Shipping is a very efficient, but also rather polluting transport mode. For example, NOx emission by an off-shore supply vessel on gasoil equals that of twenty thousand cars. A ship can transport considerably more than a car, but still.

Too optimistic
Wordpress.com (in Dutch, MiM) may cheer that inland navigation has already become fourteen per cent more fuel-efficient since the beginning of the Inland navigation fuel competition 2009, but that is too optimistic a headline. The recent drop in fuel use is not due to cleaner fuel or technologies, but to the fact that slow business allows for slower shipping literally.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) in its Second IMO Greenhouse Gas Study, 2009, estimated that international trade ships in 2007 contributed about 2.7 per cent of the world's anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

This summer, the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee agreed to a package of voluntary technical and operational measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping. These are interim measures, until the Committee's sixtieth session in March 2010.

European Union Magalog programme
What is being done at the European level? Although Norway is not a member of the European Union (EU), the Norwegian LNG shipping experiences are so useful to the rest of Europe that Norwegian energy giant GASNOR AS has the lead in an EU programme. This Maritime Gas fuel Logistics (Magalog) programme aims to address European port emisssion problems, paying special attention to the Baltic area.

Magalog's primary goal is to establish an LNG supply chain. The ports of Lübeck, Bergen, Göteborg, Stockholm and Swinemünde are all planning to set up terminals with LNG filling stations for freight ships and ferries. Lübeck will be the first to have one, by 2012.

Lübeck seems to have one problem only: its existing ferries cannot be converted to run on gas. The Magalog website reports that new ships will have to be developed. Norwegian shipyards have received orders for the construction of gas-operated ferries. We will report on the pros and cons of various engine types in the following article in this series.

Magalog focuses on coastal ferries and on off-shore rather than inland shipping, but does state that in general LNG would be suitable for European inland shipping as well.

The Magalog programme falls under the European Commission's Intelligent Energy Europe programme. It will encompass a market study and a technical feasibility study. Partners come from Norway, Germany and Poland and represent the gas industry, scientific organisations, gas interest organisations, non-governmental organisations, port authorities and city energy suppliers. Port cities, national and EU bodies and the shipping industry are to be included as indirect participants.

Related article on MindsinMotion.net

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