Ports crucial to overcoming green shipping ‘deadlock’ of ships being ready but not the fuels, says Accelleron report

Ports have been pivotal in shipping’s efficiency drives; the industry has for decades been trying to solve the intractable problem of ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ - time spent at quayside is a reliable indicator of overall performance, given that ships burn fuel at anchor as well as while performing useful transport work.

But the IMO’s new efficiency measures will require even greater responsibility from ports, which are now expected to equip shore power connections, and in some cases, even to become co-locations for renewable offshore energy, and on-site manufacturing of zero-carbon fuels.

This is what delegates heard attending an event this week at the London International Shipping Week’s (LISW) Global Hub, coinciding with the launch of an Accelleron report titled ‘Breaking the Carbon-Neutral Fuel Deadlock to Accelerate Shipping’s Net Zero Future’, with the catchier tagline: ‘The ships are ready – so where is the fuel?’

“Ports are expected to ride to the rescue,” remarked Mark Simmonds, Director of Policy & External Affairs at British Ports Association. “We talk to our member [ports] about alternative fuel, they say, ‘Well, we don’t even supply fuel now!’ It is not right to say ports are going to do this, what we are expecting from ports adds another layer of complexity.”

If the IMO’s MEPC does not provide a sufficiently strong outcome in favour of decarbonisation, it would be a “disaster” for ports, throwing investment plans into disarray, said Patrick Verhoeven, International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) managing director.

It is possible to generate clean energy in much more distributed fashion than conventional fossil fuels, since the countries where sun shines and wind blows to some extent are far more numerous than those with bountiful supplies of oil, or well-equipped refineries. But there are far fewer areas that could support the scale necessary to make renewable fuels economically viable, explained Isabelle Ireland, Head of Operations, Intercontinental Energy.

“We looked at locations where you could develop competitive green fuels at scale,” she said. “Coastal deserts – sun in the day, wind at night. We found a location in Western Australia where there was wind on a scale of Denmark, sun like southern Spain. The full build will produce 28m tonnes of green ammonia per annum. Phase One is coming in the mid-2030s.”