Below is the text version of the webinar “Current State of Sustainable Marine Fuels,” presented in March 2022 by the U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office.
[Begin audio]
Erik Ringle, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Well hello everyone and welcome to today's Bioenergy Technologies Office webinar, Current State of Sustainable Marine Fuels. I'm Erik Ringle from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Before I get started today, I'd like to cover some housekeeping items so you know how you can participate today using Zoom. You will be in "listen only" mode during the webinar.
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Okay with that I'd, now, like to turn things over to Justin Rickard to introduce our topic and panelists. Justin take it away.
Justin Rickard, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
All right, thanks Erik. I appreciate it. Can you hear me okay?
Erik Ringle
Yes, you sound great.
Justin Rickard
All right and welcome everybody. I'm Justin Rickard with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Just a few more items before we get to the presentations. This webinar is brought to you by the Bioenergy Communicators Working Group also known as BioComms. This group is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office also known as BETO. The BioComms Working Group includes bioenergy communicators, laboratory relationship managers, and education and workforce development professionals from the national labs and the BETO program who gather once a month to strategize on how to effectively communicate and promote BETO funded research to the public. The BioComms Working Group also provides the public the opportunity to learn about current and emerging bioenergy technologies, projects, and partnerships through monthly webinars. Which brings me to the agenda for today's webinar.
We have three speakers today Josh Messner from DOE BETO will present on Alternative Marine Fuel Support at BETO, Dr. Troy Hawkins from Argonne National Laboratory will present on Life Cycle Analysis for Alternative Marine Fuels, and Dr. Lee Kindberg from Maersk we'll talk about Marine Fuels for the Future. Next slide, please.
Before we get started, I'd like to provide the bios for the presenters today. Mr. Josh Messner is a technology manager with Bioenergy Technologies Office and holds a Project Management Professional certification. Josh is responsible for a number of projects within BETO's Systems Development and Integration program. He focuses primarily on strategies for scaling up and reducing risks for biofuels and bioproducts. Josh is active in BETO's efforts in biofuels for marine use, national laboratory process development units, and the utilization of high performance computing strategies to reduce scale up risk. Josh received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering with an interdisciplinary study in biotechnology from Colorado State University.
Dr. Troy Hawkins is a senior energy analyst and leads the Fuels and Products group of Argonne National Laboratories Systems Assessment Center. His research focuses on improving the environmental performance of energy and product systems with particular focus on decarbonization where he applies life cycle assessment and other quantitative system analysis approaches to provide actionable insights. He leads life cycle analysis efforts focused on alternative fuels and power systems for maritime transportation for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy programs and the Maritime Administration. His work contributes to the development of Argonne's GREET—Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use and Technologies—model for a life cycle analysis of energy systems, products, and technologies in the suite of related tools. Prior to joining Argonne, he worked as a consultant providing environmental and economic assessment for clients in the private and government sectors. Led life cycle assessment research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and worked as a researcher in the Industrial Ecology program at the New Region University of Science and Technology. Dr. Hawkins holds a B.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.
And Dr. Lee Kindberg is head of Environment and Sustainability for Maersk in North America, responsible for vessel compliance and initiatives, stakeholder outreach, and customer support on supply chain sustainability in North America. Dr. Kindberg currently serves on the Marine Board of the U.S. National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine and the Transportation Research Board's standing committee on Marine Environment. She served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and Mobile Source Technical Review Subcommittee and co-chair of the EPA's Ports work group. She is also active in the Clean Cargo Initiative—a global group global group dedicated to assessing and improving the environmental impact of shipping. She has an extensive background in the chemical industry where she was Director of Government Relations and Environmental Science for the Hoechst Celanese Fibers & Specialty Chemicals Groups. Dr. Kindberg received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of South Carolina. And before I hand it over to Josh Messner, I'd like to remind you that you can ask questions at any time during the presentation using the Q&A feature. We will collect these and try to address them during the Q&A session at the end of the presentations, time permitting. All right, next slide and Josh, please, take it away.
Josh Messner, Bioenergy Technologies Office
Okay, can you hear me?
Erik Ringle
Yes, you sound great.
Josh Messner
Great! Thank you so much!
All right as Justin was saying, my name is Josh Messner and I work for BETO. I'm a technology manager within the SDI team or Systems Development and Integration team and I primarily focus on scaling up technologies and marine fuels. During today's talk, real quick, I'm going to give you an overview of what BETO does and we're going to get into what we've done with marine fuels to date, our collaborations, and any future work that we're going to do. Next slide, please. Actually, go to the next slide after that too.
So BETO envisions a thriving and sustainable bioeconomy fueled by innovative technologies. Our mission is to develop transformative and revolutionary bioenergy technologies for a sustainable nation. Overall, BETO focuses on reducing risk through the development of technologies that enable industry investment in scaling up and commercializing these technologies. To achieve these goals, BETO is focused on biomass as a useful and renewable source of carbon. We work with our national labs as well as forming public/private partnerships with key stakeholders to research and develop technologies to produce advanced biofuels and bioproducts. Next slide, please.
From the 10,000-foot view, BETO is about gathering profit and processing and converting waste or purpose-grown feedstocks to fuels and chemicals. The bioenergy industry has a unique supply chain that takes waste from fields, forests, and landfills all the way through final products and BETO's portfolio addresses technology uncertainties within this supply chain—each step of the supply chain including biomass supply pre-treatment, conversion, and final product recovery. Next slide, please.
Based on BETO's Billion Ton Report, the U.S. bioeconomy has the potential to produce over 60 billion gallons of renewable low-carbon fuels reducing GHG production by 450 million metric tons per year and creating over 1 million direct domestic jobs. BETO is a key player in the growth of this bioeconomy and the Office invests over 250 million dollars a year in research, development, and deployment of biofuels and bioproducts from lab scale all the way through pilot scale by refineries. Next slide, please.
But even though there's the potential for more than a billion tons of biomass, there's still supply limitations and biomass should be used only for what it can be most impactful and where other renewable energies cannot be utilized. We have many sources of renewable electrons, so using biomass for electricity only makes sense in limited cases. But by converting biomass to a liquid energy dense fuel, it can be more easily utilized by the transportation sector. Which according to the energy information administration, or EIA, makes up roughly 33 percent of the U.S. GHG emissions. Of which, maritime sector makes up roughly three percent. However, this number is only with U.S. flagged vessels and so the total emissions for non-U.S. flag vessels at U.S. ports will be much higher, but we're still trying to figure out exactly what that number is. So, also, while light- and medium-duty vehicles can be more easily electrified, other portions of the sector may not be. And biofuels may be the only near-term low-carbon option for difficult to electrify modes of transportation like marine, aviation, and rail. But the question is, "Is there enough biomass to go around for all these sectors?" Next slide, please.
In short, yes, the graphic here shows that the volume of fuel potential from these resources as compared to the fuel requirements of the hard to electrified modes of transportation. BETO believes there will be more than enough biomass to fully supply the U.S. aviation, marine, and rail industries in the future as various feed stocks become available. Today MSW—or municipal solid waste—and fats, oils, and greases are available as feedstocks as are agricultural residues. Additionally, forest residues which could be collected in short order. So once there are established markets for feedstocks, then it's envisioned that energy crops and purpose-grown wood for energy are possible sources of biomass which would expand the annual U.S. supply to the previously mentioned 1 billion tons needed to supply these industries. Next slide, please.
Over the last five years, BETO has funded projects to better understand the opportunities of biofuels for marine shipping. With these projects, we have investigated many items including the current baseline fuels like heavy fuel oil, very low sulfur fuel oil, and liquid natural gas. We have investigated many potential feedstocks, conversion technologies, biofuels, and their fuel characteristics as well as the total life cycle from well to wake of these fuels. Techno-economic models have been developed to estimate the cost of production of various marine biofuels. We have and continue to investigate research barriers and opportunities. But more than just fuel needs to be investigated. Things like bunkering, port logistics, green corridors, how biofuels can fit in with a global fleet that utilizes more than just biofuels also need to be understood. Next slide, please.
It's, also, important to note, too, that along with biofuels—or any green fuel really—many other factors should be and will be utilized to lower the greenhouse gas emissions including innovative hole design, proportion or propulsion systems, and operating conditions. But I'd like to point out that based on this 2017 Evert Bowman study, biofuels showed one of the largest potentials to reduce carbon dioxide as report against the other ones. You can see that I kind of highlighted that with that green box circling the biofuels. Next slide, please.
Many feedstocks have been investigated including lignocellulosic feed stocks, wet waste, and bio-solids from anaerobic digesters and municipal solid waste from these feedstocks biofuels such as renewable diesels, biogas, and alcohols can be produced, but so can biointermediates such as biocrudes and bio-oils. These biointermediates typically need to be upgraded with hydrogen in order to make an aviation fuel or other transportation fuel. This is interesting, because typical marine fuels like HFO are petroleum residues, which are lower quality than other petroleum transportation fuels. So the idea then presents itself to use these the non-upgraded or slightly upgraded bio-crude or bio-oils as a marine fuel which would then lower their costs. The images on the right here are process development units at the Pacific Northwest National Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory—there we go; NREL—that can produce these biointermediates at engineering scale. Next slide, please.
Although biofuels can be used in smaller vessels, BETO's focus is on large ocean-going vessels like container ships and bulk carriers since the smaller vessels can be more easily electrified or have the potential to run on other alternatives like hydrogen fuel cells. Luckily the large ocean-going vessels are the vessels that run on the petroleum residues and can use the bio-oils or biocrude-based fuels that we were just discussing. Also, as you can see, on the images to the far right, how similar these fuels are. Granted this is only a visual comparison and the fuel properties are slightly different but for instance you can see you know the viscosity differences between the HFO which is on the far right and the bio-oil and bio-crude which are the two on the left there. But what you're unable to see is the difference in energy content and other items which we're continuing to study. So, also, it's important to note that biodiesels and renewable diesels are currently available in finite volumes, but these are only part of the biofuels solution as their potential scaling issues, global land use change issues - like the potential of utilizing unsustainable feedstocks such as palm oil, and cost risks that remain. So there still needs to be work on those fuels as well. Next slide, please.
As we begin to focus on these petroleum residual replacements, we find that there are significant GHG reduction benefits; benefits reducing the total well-to-wake GHG emissions by 80 to 100 percent as seen on the diagram to the left. But costs still need to be reduced as these fuels have been modeled to cost upwards of 50 to 75 percent more than the petroleum counterparts. To potentially alleviate this, the biofuels can be used as a straight dropping or blended with traditional marine fuels which we're currently investigating. Above GHG reductions, biofuels have an environmental justice benefit, too, like they are less pollutants near ports, there's utilization of waste streams that would no longer need to be disposed of, and high-paying jobs in underserved communities. Lastly, I think it's also important to consider the importance of homegrown fuel as it relates to energy security and independence which unfortunately has really taken center stage over the last several weeks here. Next slide, please.
Just to reiterate, biofuels have great potential to lower GHG emissions on a full well-to-wake basis, have potential environmental justice benefits, have drop-in fuel potential which allows them to be a near to mid-term solution that can utilize existing infrastructure, but biofuels are only one piece of the maritime decarbonization plan as there are barriers limitations that remain including a cost, volume limitations, potential land use issues if the feed stocks are not managed in a sustainable manner, and we still need more industry buy-in. Next slide, please.
I would be remiss, too, if I didn't note that we have some great collaborators. We are working with many groups which give us a great insight into the marine sector; we have an EERE cross-cutting effort to develop a hard to electrify strategy which includes marine, aviation, rail, and heavy-duty industries. We are working with many non-EERE Offices to ensure a whole-of-government approach is taken. We, also, have some international efforts including being part of the Mission Innovation: Zero-Emissions Shipping mission and IEA's Task 39 marine biofuels work. Lastly, we have a Lab Led External Advisory Board which helps our national labs develop approaches that consider industry's perspective. Next slide, please.
As we move forward, we still do have more work to do; specifically, we plan to conduct more detailed life cycle analyses and techno-economic analyses to find optimal production pathways and blend levels conduct LCAs on alternative marine fuels for true apples-to-apples comparison so we really know how much emissions are produced based on all these different fuels. We're investigating how timing of alternative zero-emission fuels affects LCAs. And we'll look at feedstocks more globally and understand how and where green corridors can be set up and we'll evaluate pathways that can serve both aviation and the marine sector. Next slide, please.
And we'll, also, continue to investigate fuel properties of the biofuels discuss they investigate a process scale up with eventual engine testing and we'll continue to keep environmental justice in our minds as we move forward. So in order to do so, we're going to continue to leverage all of our collaborations and, also, utilize some of our scale-up funding opportunities. Next slide, please.
And since I talked about funding opportunities, we're constantly looking for reviewers so if you think you are interested in being a reviewer, please go to the link here. I think we're going to post that to the chat and you can get more information about becoming a BETO Reviewer for our FOAs—Funding Opportunity Announcements. And with that, next slide.
I thank you and look forward to your questions at the end. And now I think we're going to bump over to Troy. So thank you.
Dr. Troy Hawkins, Argonne National Laboratory
Hi. Thanks, Josh. Can somebody confirm that you can hear me?
Erik Ringle
Troy, you sound great.
Dr. Troy Hawkins
Yup, great! Thank you very much!
Well good afternoon and thanks for joining this webinar highlighting the opportunities for biofuels to make an impact in decarbonizing maritime shipping. I'm Troy Hawkins from Argonne National Laboratory and I lead a team focusing on life cycle analysis of bioenergy systems. I'll be presenting an analysis we've done focusing on Life Cycle Analysis of Biofuels for Maritime Shipping which addresses the question, "What environmental benefits might be realized by using biofuels to replace heavy fuel oil for maritime shipping?" It's my pleasure to be presenting alongside Josh and Lee and representing the analysis performed by our team. Next slide.
I'd like to begin by thanking the Bioenergy Technologies Office for the opportunity to do this work and thanking Josh Messner and Jim Spaeth, our Technology Managers. I would, also, like to thank the Vehicle Technologies Office and our Technical Manager Kevin Stork for their support of parallel work. And the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration specifically Tom Thompson, Vasileios Tzelepis, and Daniel Yuska for their support. This has been a team effort. The laboratories and staff here listed here have all contributed to aspects of this work and/or the broader project of which it is part. Specifically, I'd like to acknowledge Eric Tan, Abhijit Dutta, Ling Tao, and Emily Newes from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Karthi Ramaswamy, Shuyun Li, Pimpham Meyer, and Jalal Askander from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. And Greg Zaimes, Uisung Lee, Farhad Masum, and Michael Wang from Argonne National Laboratory. Next slide.
The objective of this work is to accelerate the uptake of biofuels for maritime shipping with analysis and testing and to lay the groundwork for biofuel demonstration. Next slide.
As I mentioned in the acknowledgments, this is a collaborative, multi-laboratory effort. The life cycle analysis I'm presenting today is part of a broader project to down select promising biofuel production pathways, produce sufficient quantities of biofuels to enable testing, to perform fuel sample analysis and testing, compatibility assessment, and to understand the logistics of marine biofuel supply from feedstock to the ship engine. The life cycle analysis modeling draws specifically on process modeling conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in connection with their fuel pathway design and fuel cost analysis activities. Next slide.
Life cycle analysis is a standardized approach for comparing the environmental impacts between products or technologies across their entire life cycle. Life cycle analysis is a well-established field which has been developed over the past 30 or so years. The key elements of life cycle analysis are a GREET across practitioners in ISO 14044 and related standards the purpose of life cycle analysis is to provide a fair, apples-to-apples comparison across options to provide a function or a service. In this case, we're comparing various fuels for maritime shipping with conventional heavy fuel oil or HFO and more recently low sulfur fuel oil or LSFO. The common basis for comparison is referred to as the functional unit. In this presentation I'll compare fuels on the basis of a megajoule of energy contained in the fuel based on their lower heating value. While I won't get into other results for this presentation, we, also, compare options on the basis of trip specific characteristics such as power requirements and duration and modifications to operations made by the ship to comply with emissions control zones. The boundary of the analysis runs from extraction of the feedstocks and other raw materials used in the production of the fuel alternatives through all of the steps involved in their conversion and fuel production through transportation and distribution of fuels to the ships, fuel combustion, and any associated use phase considerations or waste management. This slide shows the comparable system boundaries for conventional heavy fuel oil, or HFO, liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and biofuels. You'll note that in the case of both heavy fuel oil and biofuels, the fuel production phase results in multiple fuel or energy co-products. In that case, we typically use allocation on an energy basis to assign upstream impacts to each of the energy products. The results of this life cycle analysis help us to understand and avoid potential burden shifting across supply chain segments and our life cycle phases to screen across potential environmental impacts and to identify key drivers for the most significant environmental impacts of interest. In this case, we're focusing on greenhouse gas emissions and, also, considering criteria air pollutant emissions, water consumption, and energy consumption metrics. Next slide.
Over the course of our work, we've analyzed a number of alternative marine fuel pathways. I'll present results for a longer list of pathways in a later slide. During this current fiscal year, in one part of our task, we're focusing on this down selected list of promising pathways for producing biofuels that could replace heavy fuel oil for maritime shipping. These pathways include fast pyrolysis and catalytic fast pyrolysis of wood feedstocks, hydrothermal liquefaction of sludge and manure, Fischer-Tropsch's synthesis of landfill gas, and lignin ethanol oil produced via solvolysis of ethanol and the lignin waste from lignocellulosic biofuel production. The figure shows an example of a process flow diagram describing the process for converting biomass or waste feedstocks into useful fuel products. These are detailed models describing our best estimate of how a production facility would operate at full scale including the full mass and energy balance for the process, key inputs of energy catalysts and other chemicals, waste treatment, heat integration, and production of co-products such as electricity or other fuels. The output of this particular process are the various cuts of pyrolysis oil. The conversion process modeling for this work was performed by NREL and PNNL. Slide seven.
Our life cycle analysis is performed using Argonne's GREET model which stands for Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Technologies. GREET has been developed since 1995 with long-term support from the U.S. Department of Energy—in particular, the Transportation Offices including the Bioenergy Technologies Office, the Vehicle Technologies Office, and the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology Office. The model is regularly updated and expanded with new versions being released at least once a year; typically in October in recent years. A key focus of GREET's since its inception has been tracking the life cycle performance of fuels and transportation technologies such as biofuels, electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles. More recently, it has, also, expanded to include a broader range of technologies. GREET has earned a large user base with the list of registered users now exceeding 50,000. These users are distributed around the world and across sectors of the economy including a wide range of industry and research organizations. While the core purpose of GREET has been to guide the Department of Energy research and development decisions with life cycle information about the environmental implications of various technologies. It is also proven useful for policy makers and regulators. GREET is used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in connection with its renewable fuel standard by the California Air Resources Board in association with the low-carbon fuel standard by the International Civil Aviation Organization—ICAO—in association with its Sustainable Aviation Fuels Program or CORSIA and by a number of others such as the Oregon DEQ in connection with its Clean Fuels Program. GREET is publicly available at the URL shown in the lower right corner. Next slide.
Now I'd like to focus to go through some of our results. This slide shows results for the marine bio-oils that I described earlier and it focuses on life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Each bar represents a fuel pathway with the name of each showing the biomass or waste feedstock, the conversion technology, and the final fuel. The horizontal axis shows the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions for each pathway. The bars extend above and below the axis with negative portions reflecting the sequestration of carbon in waste products from biofuel production processes and credits associated with the emissions which would have occurred if the waste feedstocks had been handled with conventional waste management practices. Other stacks in the bar reflect the impacts of producing and collecting feedstocks, the conversion process, and inputs along each pathway. The yellow dots provide the net greenhouse gas result often referred to as the well-to-all emissions. The black and red vertical lines are benchmarks providing the greenhouse gas emissions level reflecting a 70 and 50 percent reduction compared with conventional, low-sulfur fuel oil. We're focusing here on pathways that achieve a 70 percent greenhouse gas reduction or better. You can see that all of these pathways achieve quite favorable greenhouse gas emissions. The lowest emissions are for the waste-based pathways produced via hydrothermal liquefaction of wastewater sludge in swine manure due to the credits associated with the avoidance of methane emissions associated with conventional waste management practices. The positive emissions are primarily associated with process inputs, for example, natural gas in electricity use. The greenhouse gas emissions for the catalytic fast pyrolysis pathways are primarily due to the acquisition of the wood biomass feedstocks. Next slide.
This slide shows results for the same pathways presented in the same order in terms of high to low greenhouse gas emissions, but in this case presenting the life cycle sulfur oxide emissions. I'm showing this result as an example of our results for criteria air pollutant emissions more broadly including particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds. As I mentioned, we're, also, tracking water consumption and energy consumption. Due to limited time during today's webinar, I'll focus on sulfur oxide. Sulfur oxide is a criteria air pollutant, and its emissions are determined in large part by the sulfur content of the fuel. Sulfur oxide emissions were the focus of IMO policy implemented just over a year ago reducing the limit on the sulfur content of marine fuel to 0.5 percent. Going into the study, a hypothesis was that biofuels would perform well on sulfur oxide emissions due to the low sulfur content of many biomass feedstocks. What we found was that while this is true in many cases, there are some key exceptions to be aware of. What we can see from these results is that while the fast pyrolysis pathways to convert woody biomass to bio-oil have low sulfur emissions, the pathways for hydrothermal liquefaction of sludge and manure can have significant sulfur emissions from combustion of the resultant fuels. The sulfur content can be effectively reduced by hydrotreating. However, that hydrotreating comes at a trade-off due to the impacts of producing the hydrogen that's required. Next slide.
Again in this slide, we see the same pathways presented in the same order. In this case, we're highlighting another metric of the life cycle performance of the biofuel pathways; namely the marginal cost of greenhouse gas abatement. This metric is calculated by dividing the difference in cost for each pathway compared with conventional low sulfur fuel oil by the difference in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, cost is estimated as the minimum fuel selling price required to achieve profitability for the fuel producer. This metric relates to the cost effectiveness of each fuel pathway to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions compared with current practices. Results across pathways we analyze range from minus 90 to 400 dollars per ton CO2 equivalents with the pathways shown in the figure ranging up to 250 dollars per ton. Interestingly, due to the fact that the cost for waste-to-energy pathways could potentially be even lower than the estimated average price of heavy fuel oil, we see negative marginal cost of greenhouse gas abatement for some of the waste pathways. To benchmark these results, we could compare with the price of credits under California's low-carbon fuel standard which have been in the 150 to 200 dollars per ton CO2 equivalent range in recent months. So these results are quite promising for the potential of biofuels to replace low sulfur heavy fuel oil. Going to the next slide.
This shows our expanded screening analysis of a larger set of pathways. Here, again, we see the life cycle phases in the stacked bars and yellow dots for the net greenhouse gas emissions. And I can go through these. These are some different categories of fuels. So if you go to the next slide.
Here we're shading out all but the fossil fuel pathways and what we can see for these is that there are significant emissions from the combustion of the fuels. In all cases apart from ammonia and I should say there's some significant uncertainty in the combustion phase emissions for ammonia where we have not accounted for potential for nitrous oxide emissions.
So in this list you can see results for conventional HFO at half a percent sulfur. You can, also, see conventional HFO with a sulfur scrubber. And all these pathways have higher emissions than the other biofuel and alternatives. The top two pathways in this list are actually transition technologies where biomass feedstocks are co-fed with fossil fuels to produce partial biofuels. Next slide.
This slide grays out all but the biofuel pathways; so we can see that these biofuel pathways do better or achieve lower greenhouse gas emissions than the conventional fuel pathways. And we can see a pretty wide range. Some of these I've talked about previously, but you can see that there really are a large number of biofuel pathways that could be used to produce marine fuel. Next slide.
And this slide grays out all but the e-fuels—or fuels produced from renewable electricity or renewable hydrogen and green ammonia—and you can see, also, these pathways achieve quite favorable greenhouse gas emissions. I'll talk more about these in the next slide. So let's go to the next slide.
These fuels, renewable fuels produced from renewable electricity like methanol, Fischer-Tropsch's diesel, and green ammonia have received a lot of attention recently, and these are an opportunity to use future low-carbon, low-cost electricity. And you can see on the right-hand side here, what I wanted to point out is the high electricity use for these fuels. Electricity is a high-quality energy carrier and here for each megajoule of fuel it would require about two megajoules of electricity to produce it. So this would be a significant expansion in the amount of electricity that would be needed to be generated to produce these fuels for transport. But with the potential scale-up of low-carbon, low-cost electricity, these could be, in the longer term, a complement to bio-based pathways to achieve decarbonization goals. Research is needed to better characterize especially ammonia as a fuel. This is another fuel that's gained a lot of attention due to the fact that it has no carbon in the fuel, so when it's combusted there's no CO2 emissions, but the supply chain is quite important for understanding the impacts—the life cycle impacts—of ammonia. Next slide.
In this last series of slides—and I'll go through these fairly quickly—we're identifying multiple promising pathways for future alternative fuels considering greenhouse gas and cost. We're comparing as I said earlier minimum fuel selling price and the values in this figure are the ratio of the alternative fuel to conventional low sulfur fuel oil. On the vertical axis, we see the price and on the horizontal axis we see the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. The dotted line, again, shows a 70 percent greenhouse gas emission reduction and the more favorable pathways are those toward the lower left corner. Next slide.
So here we can see fossil fuels offer reasonable prices with drawbacks in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Next slide.
These next pathways shown in red are those that are co-feed pathways. They offer a greenhouse gas and price compromise by combining biomass feedstocks with fossil feed stocks. We analyze them as a potential bridge to deeper decarbonization, but we did find in some of our studies that these have a higher marginal cost of greenhouse gas abatement. Next slide.
Biofuels can achieve significant greenhouse gas reductions with all of these pathways achieving more than a 70 percent reduction and the prices can approach those of conventional low sulfur fuel oil although work is needed to bring down the price of some of these pathways. Next slide.
And then select waste-based pathways can achieve negative greenhouse gas emissions and promising costs suggest the potential to compete with conventional low sulfur fuel oil. Next slide.
Finally, the e-fuels produced from captured CO2 and renewable electricity could significantly increase our supply of low-carbon fuel. Next slide.
So this is a number of different promising pathways that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions with relatively modest price increases. Multiple pathways would be needed to meet future fuel demand and industry experience is important to optimize their production. Next slide.
So in conclusion, we see that international and national policies are driving the deployment of low-carbon and low sulfur fuels. Alternative fuels must meet decarbonization targets and increasingly stringent environmental standards on sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and other environmental pollutant categories. The transition to alternative marine fuels is very complex requiring a global outlook and coordination across the value chain including engine manufacturers, fuel suppliers, ship owners, and operators. I may be biased, but life cycle analysis is critical for guiding the sustainability of the maritime sector. Analysis should consider impacts across the entire life cycle to avoid shifting environmental burdens across segments of the supply chain or across pollutant categories—emissions to land, water, and air. Absence of robust accounting protocols can undermine and potentially negate the climate benefit of alternative fuels for marine shipping. So there's a need for holistic, economic, and environmental assessment. The marginal abatement cost metric that we show here can help us understand the cause what pathways promise to be the most cost effective for decarbonizing maritime shipping. And this work just demonstrates how harmonized standardized LCA results can guide decisions. And so here we're putting forward the GREET model as an example of one that could be used for analyzing the life cycle greenhouse gas and other impacts of marine fuels. And we're currently working GREET has had a focus on the United States. We're expanding to address other world regions such as China, and the Middle East and North Africa. If you could go to the next slide.
And this slide is just to say that our GREET models are publicly available. So you can see for yourself some of the results that we've shown in this presentation. They're available at the link in the lower right corner and next slide. Thank you.
Dr. Lee Kindberg, Maersk
Hi everybody I'm Lee Kindberg with Maersk. I head the Environment Sustainability practice for North America for Maersk. We are headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. And I really would like to thank BETO and my co-presenters for the opportunity to talk to you today about where we are in terms of actual implementation of some of these things on real vessels. Now for those of you who are not familiar with the company Maersk is a global logistics company that our ocean business is one of the largest container shipping companies in the world. We operate over 700 vessels on that container business. Now if we'll move to the first slide.
I don't think I have to tell anybody on this webinar the importance and the urgency of the climate challenge, but just to put it in real terms, one very large container vessel moving from Europe to Asia and back consumes 7,000 tons of fuel oil and that generates about 21,000 tons of CO2. And that vessel's probably going to make three or four of those trips in a given year and we operate now those are some of the biggest ones but that we operate over 700 vessels. So you can see the magnitude of our carbon footprint is very significant and we take this very seriously, we don't see this as sustainable. Our customers are demanding that this change. Over half of our top 200 customers—these are the actual cargo owners—are either setting science-based targets or are in the process of doing so. So as you can see, this is something that the cargo owners and we as carriers take very seriously. Now let's move to the next slide.
So what is our strategy? Well if I presented this to you a month ago there would have been some different numbers on here, because in 2018 we committed to Net Zero Carbon shipping by 2050. This year, we accelerated that by 10 years to 2040, which is a pretty big acceleration. Now the good news is, compared to 2008 we've already, through energy efficiency programs, reduced our carbon footprint per container per kilometers on an intensity basis by 42 percent. That was a bit higher before COVID, but as you know COVID has stressed supply chains globally. Now let's move on to the next slide.
This is our roadmap on one slide. So the fonts are rather small. Sorry about that. But let me just give you some specific highlights here. In 2018, we launched this net zero ambition. 2019, we actually introduced a biofuel-based ocean transport net zero service and it's net zero tank-to-wake. It's about 85 to 90 percent on a well-to-weight basis. So that product is called ECO Delivery. So if you hear me refer to ECO Delivery later in the presentation, that's what I'm talking about and that product has been very well received and I'll come back to that in a few minutes. In 2020, we identified the priority future fuels for our business. In 2021, we actually announced investment in 13 methanol enabled vessels. We will be launching, in 2023, the world's first liner shipping vessel sailing on green methanol. Now that could be e-methanol or it could be biomethanol. And that vessel will be what we call a small vessel it's only going to hold about two thousand twenty-foot containers. So that's a vessel that would operate in a feeder service, for example, this one is planned to operate in the Baltics and Northern Europe. Then in 2024, we will actually start launching 12 big mother vessels—these are 16,000 TEU vessels—that will be launched over 2024 and 2025 and they will also sail on green methanol.
These two classes of vessels will also be dual fuel vessels and we have committed that all of our vessels henceforth will have dual fuel capability and they will all have at least the capability of running on at least one net zero carbon or very low-carbon fuel. Now we are in the process of aligning with the Science Based Targets initiative, they have not yet published their pathways for maritime. But so we're waiting for that, but we are intending to set a Science-Based Targets initiative target. I won't go into the details of our decarbonization commitments that are below that blue line there, but just want to make the point that this ocean commitment was our first commitment, but we are also making the commitment for air freight contract logistics, cold chain, and inland transportation. So that by 2040, we're zero across it all. Moving on to the next slide.
Let me talk a bit about that ECO Delivery bio-based biofuel-based product. This is a mass balance type product like buying green electricity. We buy certified sustainable biofuels or other green fuels in the future. These are meeting the requirements of RBC or ISCC and they must be from sustainable sources, they must not compete with food production, and they must not result in substantial changes in land use.
Now we actually burn those sustainable biofuels on selected container vessels in our network. So this is an actual reduction of our carbon footprint; it's not an offsetting scheme. The customer can actually buy this carbon neutral shipping globally right now and you see some of the companies there that are already participating in this business. So again, biofuel replaces the fossil fuel, we allocate the CO2 savings to the customers that order it, and it's third party verified by PWC. Moving on to the next slide.
I'm comparing three of the options that we have identified as the most probable success options for us for decarbonizing across our ocean business. First is the various biodiesels. The good news is of course that already exists and it can be used as a drop in or can be blended with current marine fuels and we're doing that today. We've operated up to 100 percent, but more typical would be in the 30 percent range. However, there is a limited availability of feedstocks that fit that definition of sustainability. We are working to expand those definitions and feed stock options. And of course the question is "What's the competition doing," "What are the air freight folks doing," "What are other transportation sector areas doing in terms of the use of biodiesel," and "What are they willing to pay for it?"
We see green methanol, as you heard me say earlier, as the fuel of the near future. It's a very common industrial chemical. We know the characteristics. There are already tanks and so forth on, in operation today, well-known handling. It can be produced from both biomass and renewable electricity.
And under the green methanol we do, also, categorize a subset of lignin ethanol oils that we're continuing to research with a university with whom we're partnering. For the more distant future, we're looking at green ammonia; also, very common industrial chemical characteristics are very well known. There's an infrastructure for it around the world in terms of—not green ammonia, but for ammonia. It can be produced at scale from renewable electricity alone and there is no carbon in the molecule. But there are definitely some safety and toxicity challenges that lead us to be concerned about how can we identify all the risks and reduce those risks for maritime applications. Let's move on to the next slide.
Now I'm not going to go through this whole slide. This is an eye chart. What I'm showing on the left is the energy carrier characteristics. You've got drop-in fuels, then going to low flash point fuels like methanol, then going to non-cryogenic gases and cryogenic gases, and other futuristic things. On the right, you're seeing the amount of change that has to be made to the vessel engine and the vessel itself. So for those drop in or blend in fuels, we're basically able to do that with perhaps a few changes in filters and that kind of thing—minimal change. As you go down, you see greater and greater complexity in what we have to do to make the vessel operate on those types of fuels and how significant is that change. Now let's move on to the next slide.
New fuels are not enough. As it says, we have to build a whole fuel ecosystem all the way from feedstock to production, all the way to the engines, the fueling systems, and actual operations of the vessels. So it's not enough to just say we're going to put these tanks of fuel out there and pump the fuel to the vessels. We have to actually figure out how to make all that happen, because, today, there's none out there. And we, also, have to evaluate these fuels on certainly absolutely life cycle assessment, but, also, price, scalability, sustainability, and technical viability when we look at each of these fuels. Moving on to the next slide then.
The global production of green methanol—as you can see on the left—is quite small. By the end of 2024, for those big 12 big vessels, we're going to need half a million tons of green methanol. That's if we're able to operate them 100 percent on these green fuels. That will reduce our global footprint by 1.5 million tons of greenhouse gases CO2 equivalents. To decarbonize our entire fleet, as you can see, we'd be talking about a much larger number.
Again, our first pilot scale carbon neutral container ship is going to be on the water in 2023 and the next 12 start in 2024. So we're making a big investment in these methanol-based ships. And what we're doing here is solving that chicken and egg conundrum. Who's going to build a vessel if you don't know if you can get fuel, but who's going to build a fuel production plant if you don't know if there'll be any customers? So here we're saying there will be customers. So let's move on to the next slide.
And I believe we're ready for questions now. So Justin can I turn this back over to you to moderate the questions?
Justin Rickard
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both Lee, Troy, and Josh for great presentations on the current state of sustainable marine fuels.
We have about five minutes left and we got a lot of questions. I think we only have time for a couple here. Some of these could be addressed to the individual and some you may all can participate in answering. This one looks like to Troy. You raised concern about availability of systems to support ammonia as energy carrier however there are significant existing infrastructure challenges to support chemicals...Well, no, I'm sorry. There is a significant existing infrastructure to support chemicals and fertilizer industries. What are your concerns on the availability of systems to support ammonia as an energy carrier? Are you there Troy?
Josh Messner
Looks like you're muted there Troy.
Dr. Troy Hawkins
Sorry is this better?
Justin Rickard
Yeah.
Dr. Troy Hawkins
Yeah. Thank you for this question. And I didn't mean to imply that there aren't infrastructure to transport and to distribute ammonia, rather we just don't have experience with the large scale use of ammonia as a fuel and I think there's questions around how it operates in engines, the emissions associated with using ammonia, and I think there are some questions about the expansion in the amount of ammonia that would be required to fuel ships and there could be some logistic concerns associated with just the transportation and distribution of an explosive and potentially toxic substance.
Justin Rickard
All right. Thank you. Looks like this question is for Lee. Can you comment on the general mode of combustion for the methanol burning engines in your vessels? Do you see the need for innovations and engine combustion strategies to enable the optimal use of methanol in your vessels?
Looks like you're on mute, Lee.
Dr. Lee Kindberg
Thank you I thought I was going to get through the day without the hearing that phrase.
We are actually building new vessels for these uses, but we have hopes being able to retrofit them in the future. And I will tell you I'm a chemist not an engineer and so, if whoever's asking that question wants to get back to me separately, I'll be happy to try to get that answer from the folks who actually know it.
Justin Rickard
Perfect. Everybody's email addresses are here so if your question doesn't get answered uh feel free to reach out to them.
Next question. "Are there are other viable pathways for CO2 conversion to methanol as a marine fuel?"
Josh Messner
I'll start with this one. I think viable as far as what timeline is something that you need to think about with that. So I think certainly in 20 or 30 years where there's lots of green electricity and things of that nature then I think that a CO2 capture then the viability becomes a lot easier to make happen. But right now, I think the technology readiness level of that particular mode of creating the methanol might not quite be there. But I'll let Lee talk since they're looking at methanol right now.
Dr. Lee Kindberg
Oh you're singing our song.
Josh Messner
All right.
Dr. Lee Kindberg
I don't think I really have much to add to that. The question, too, is what is viable? At what cost can this be done? What practicality? And can you do it on vessel or do you have to do it on land? And of course, the question comes, "If you do it on the vessel, where do you put the result?"
Justin Rickard
Awesome. All right let's see next one. "Do we feel that the waste-based fuels have significant feedstocks to make a large amount of these sustainable fuels?" These fuels seem to be the best. Well basically the questioner's asking, "Do we have enough of the waste-based fuels to have an impact?"
Josh Messner
Yeah, you know, sorry. I'll jump in and then Troy will probably talk a little bit about it.
But, yeah, certainly. There's not enough waste to produce fuels for all of the markets that are going to want it. You think you have the LCFS that's really going to be stealing a lot of the potential marine fuels for like aviation fuels that are marine feedstocks for aviation fuels. And so, that's why we need to really investigate lots of different feedstock types. So in short there's not enough to just make the waste fuels, but since we have so many different pathways to create these potential fuels, we're going to have to use them all. And we're, also, going to need to look at hydrogen fuel cells for some of the smaller vessels and other alternative fuels for the vessels. So Troy...
Dr. Troy Hawkins
Yeah, no. I will just agree with that and say our country has made a commitment to reducing waste-based methane emissions which connects up nicely with these waste-based fuel pathways, but they would be part of a solution rather than the entire solution.
Justin Rickard
Sorry just one more question. And then we can end it for the day. "So how important is it to scale green hydrogen production technologies to lower the greenhouse gas footprint of marine fuels?"
Dr. Troy Hawkins
Well I can say real quickly... I mean we see in these pathways that we're using conventional hydrogen and the pathways still perform well from a greenhouse gas perspective, but having renewable hydrogen, green hydrogen opens a lot of opportunities and if you can do that also at a very low cost then things like these e-methanol, e-Fischer-Tropsch diesel pathways that I mentioned become viable.
Dr. Lee Kindberg
And I would just add green hydrogen not blue.
Josh Messner
Absolutely.
Dr. Lee Kindberg and Josh Messner
Yep.
Justin Rickard
All right. I am sorry, but we are out of time. I want to thank Josh Messner and Doctors Lee Kindberg and Troy Hawkins for taking time out of your busy schedules to educate us today on sustainable marine fuels. If you didn't get your question answered about this program, you are welcome to send them to the speakers. Their emails are listed on this slide. For more bioenergy webinars like this and other BETO funded research, please sign up at the BETO newsletters page at the bottom of the slide. The webinar recording and slides will be posted on the BETO webinars page in a couple of weeks. Alright, thanks everyone and have a great rest of your day.
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