UCL study: now-or-never for zero emission retrofits
Drastic changes are needed if shipping is to meet with carbon targets (Source: UCL)
As much as a third of vessels either on the water or on order must “quickly transition to zero-emission technologies” through retrofits, “or face premature scrapping,” said a study released by the University College London (UCL) Energy Institute last week.
When vessels currently on order are delivered, the fleet will exceed shipping’s 1.5°C CO2 emissions budget by around half, meaning that even with no new ships ordered today, those that have already been ordered will generate 48% more CO2 throughout their lifetimes than the 9.6 billion-tonne CO2 budget. Vessels “representing around half of committed emissions would need to either retrofit to scalable zero-emission technology or be scrapped and replaced with zero-emission vessels immediately.”
If vessels are ‘sufficiently large and sufficiently young,’ and have sufficient storage space and electronically controlled engines, they can be retrofitted to ammonia or methanol fuels. But this is likely to result in fleet devaluation as the cost of zero-emission retrofits, considered to be USD 14 million per vessel, amortises over the course of its remaining life. “As a consequence, even if all fossil-fuelled ships could technologically retrofit, a large share of the fleet value would still be stranded.”
It does not look good for the LNG-fuelled vessels currently being delivered en masse to container lines. “Around a quarter of the LNG-fuelled fleet value might become stranded by 2030 if it needs to retrofit to ammonia to stay competitive,” the study finds.
