LNG at Sea - The New Driver in Maritime Transport.

A few days ago I posted an article titled Clean Energy and Our Shipping industry, outlining some of the large challenges facing the Global shipping industry as it attempts to shift into a cleaner fuel consumption status. I also stated that we would be publishing a regular stream of articles detailing current happenings and developments as this industry moves forward.

Two days ago, one of the world's biggest shipping lines - CMA CGM - made a public announcement concerning their future plans. CMA (shortened) is the third largest container ship group in the world, running nearly 500 ships with the total capability to move 2.55 million containers at a time...

CMA is responsible for moving a significant part of the world's cargoes, and their fleet would consume somewhere around 600 - 900,000 tons of fuel a year and maybe more. Now they, along with every other company, are moving to cleaner burning fuels to comply with the International marine Organization's 2017 Emission Laws.

On November 7th, CMA CGM announced that they had placed orders for nine new container ships, each of 22,000 TEUs capacity. That means each one can carry 22,000 x 6 mt containers - these are very large ships, and the will be the most modern afloat.

The impressive news is that in this new build order, all nine ships are to be fitted with LNG burning engines. This is an enormous step forward, as the world's key marine engine builders are still only a relatively few years into designing these very new LNG duel fuel engines...

While there is no indication of who will build the engines for CMA, one of the leading marine engineering groups is a Finnish group called Wartsilla, and this company is currently building numerous models of its power plants - like the one pictured - to run on LNG.

 A spokesman for the CMA CGM group made these comments about the environmental advantages of the LNG fuelled propulsion...

" The use of LNG is a real technological breakthrough that will yield significant benefits compared to heavy fuel oil:

-up to 25% less CO 2

-99% less Sulphur emissions

-99% less fine particles

-85% less Nitrogen Oxides emissions. 

Moreover, the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), which measures a ship’s environmental footprint, is improved by 20% compared to ships only propelled by fuel oil. (CMA CGM company website:November 7, 2017)

This is just one example of many advances and developments happening in the Maritime industry, as people work steadily towards a cleaner future. Please follow along with us over the weeks to come as we bring you more news about these and other developments in this vital sector.

For more information about LNG in world markets, Renewable Energy and other current issues, we invite you to view the mapping products covering these issues at Business Maps Australia , or call us on  +61 455 296 533 

and see how our up to date mapping can assist you and your company.