Carbon Capture Could Be of Interest to the Maritime Industry

The nascent industry of carbon storage and utilization could be of interest to shipping, when it comes to its decarbonization effots. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Intermodal noted that “we have seen India and Pakistan suffering the last days from extreme spring heatwaves. It is, indeed, a wake-up call to the international as well as the shipping community. Extreme climate events are going to continue and will only increase in rate and intensity unless immediate actions occur. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented four scenarios for reducing the global temperature by 1.5°C in their Special Report issued in 2019. All the cases involved carbon capture and three of them required the involvement of the most important use of carbon capture. Thus, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects have recently gained increased interest for further development”.

According to Intermodal’s Tanker Broker, Mr. Apostolos Rompopoulos, “we recently heard the announcement by a newly established company (ECOLOG), to invest in the “industry” of Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage CCUS in the prospect of zero emissions by 2050. It aims to transport 50 million tons of CO2 per year by 2035. To support the industry’s plans to cut harmful emissions, this maritime network will connect CO2 emitters to storage facilities for low cost or reuse, at analogous cost. ECOLOG’s ships will be the pioneers in a capacity range from 20,000 cubic meters up to 85,000 cubic meters for long-haul trades”.

Intermodal’s broker added that “each of the ships will carry over 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year between ECOLOG terminal. Furthermore, terminals and ships will operate at a pressure of 8 bar to ensure safe and efficient transport of large volumes of CO2. The technology that will be developed in this network has been founded many years ago, it will just be redesigned for scale and product. According to analysts, the present demand for CO2 is about 230 Mt globally per year, and the fertilizer industry alone consumes 125 Mt per year as a raw material in urea manufacturing. Oil and gas producers use around 70-80 Mt per year for EOR (Enhanced oil recovery). CO2 is also an integral part of food and beverage production, cooling, water treatment and agriculture, but the demand is rather small.As per recently published reports, the CO2 stream differs since CO2 suitable for EOR or some other industrial uses will not likely be suitable for food and beverage production, and carriage requirements are impacted by purity. Other opportunities for utilizing CO2 and fuel production for methane and methanol are conceived of as an energy chain for the future”.

“To conclude, the importance of CO2 utilization can be detected in two ways: the removal and long-term storage of atmospheric CO2 and the decrease of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. Potentially, using CO2 to make useful products can possibly balance out some of the costs of climate change mitigation”, Mr. Rompopoulos concluded.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide