A new report from the LR Maritime Decarbonisation Hub and Safetytech Accelerator highlights the role of technology in enabling the shipping industry to develop specific mechanisms to track, verify and assure the true carbon intensity of sustainable marine fuels.
Shipping’s decarbonisation is focused on delivering alternative fuels that significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, to be sure that alternative fuels can achieve the GHG reductions needed, emissions from the end-to-end supply chain of these fuels must also be measured, from the resource used to produce the fuels, to their consumption onboard the ship.
According to the report, the key challenge facing the industry is that ship operators can lack visibility over the supply chain responsible for producing, delivering and bunkering a fuel used on their ships.
A marine fuel can be presented as carbon-neutral, but could release substantial emissions when measured on a life-cycle assessment or well-to-wake basis
Furthermore, alternative fuels may take diverse grey or blue production routes, thus delivering fuels that are often blended, mixed or re-labelled during transportation and distribution before they reach their final users. As a result, there is no guarantee that fuel bunkered retains the same carbon footprint as the fuel that left the production facility.
For this reason, the LR Maritime Decarbonisation Hub and Safetytech Accelerator have explored technologies that can track the true carbon intensity of hydrogen and ammonia, two of the most promising long-term alternative fuel candidates for shipping’s energy transition.
Working with two technology vendors, TYMLEZ and Authentix, the collaboration resulted in a joint report, “Tracing the true carbon intensity of sustainable marine fuels,” which examines new methods of tracing information on how a fuel is being produced, from the source of the electricity used in the production process, to the delivery of an un-altered final product.
The first method is through the TYMLEZ solution, which utilises a ‘guarantee of origin’ (GO) scheme where each unit of hydrogen or ammonia is certified through a live facility data platform that can capture emissions data during the production process, such as water and fuel usage and grid electricity consumption. Blockchain technology is deployed for green hydrogen and green ammonia tracking systems.
Following the production and supply of the fuel that is accompanied with a GO certificate, the second method is applied through the Authentix approach, which offers downstream assurance.
The Authentix solution can account for any blending or miss-labelling of the fuel through the use of a synthetic marker system, where the fuel is evaluated via chemical detection of the origin of the fuel, as well as any occurred dilution.
Given the varied production routes of sustainable marine fuels, it is essential to develop new carbon tracing authentication methods to ensure that the new fuels purchased are being produced, transported and stored in a way that will deliver emissions performance expectations.
The complexity of the marine fuel supply chain, with its diverse production methods, presents significant challenges to the shipping industry as the definition of sustainability is extended to include all stages of well-to-wake emissions
Charles Haskell, LR Maritime Decarbonisation Hub Director, said.
