The potential benefits of routing vessels via the NSR have long been realised. File Image / Pixabay

• Sea Legend's Dubai Tower reached Teesport on September 9 about 20 days after leaving Chinese waters with 1,370 TEU of batteries and solar modules
• PanStar Acro arrived at Felixstowe on September 12, 21 days out of Busan, the first Korean container ship to use the route
• Operator claims the route halves transit time and cuts carbon per voyage by about 50%; ships return via Suez
• Campaign coalition warns of black carbon and says LNG is no answer
• Polar fuels proposal from Denmark, Germany, France, and the Solomon Islands is before the IMO

The first vessels of two new Asia to Europe container services through the Northern Sea Route have arrived in European ports, prompting a fresh warning from campaign coalition the Clean Arctic Alliance.

The Liberia-flagged, 1,740 TEU Dubai Tower, operated by Chinese carrier Sea Legend as the opening sailing of its weekly China-Europe Arctic Express, docked at Teesport on the evening of September 9, about 20 days after leaving Chinese waters, chief operating officer Li Xiaobin told the Global Times.

The ship loaded at Ningbo, Shanghai, Taicang, and Qingdao, a sequence reshuffled by Typhoon Dolphin, and carried 1,370 TEU of energy storage containers, power batteries, and photovoltaic modules, the company said.

Sea Legend said the vessel's track across the Northeast Passage was adjusted continuously to ice forecasts, and that the voyage produced operational data including speeds in open and ice-covered water, main and auxiliary engine fuel consumption, and delays and detours caused by drifting ice.

The ship went on to call at Felixstowe and was due at Hamburg on Monday with Gdynia to follow, according to the Clean Arctic Alliance, and Sea Legend says ships will return to China via the Suez Canal.

The voyage is the first of eight Sea Legend plans to run through the Arctic this season.

"The route is expected to cut transit time to Europe to about 20 days one way, nearly halving transport time compared with traditional routes, while reducing carbon emissions by about 50 percent per voyage," Li was quoted as saying.

A second vessel, the 2,758 TEU PanStar Acro sailing under a South Korean government-backed trial, reached Felixstowe on September 12, 21 days out of Busan, before calling at Rotterdam on its way to Gdansk, according to media reports.

The Clean Arctic Alliance, a group of 24 environmental organisations including Greenpeace, WWF, and Transport & Environment, said in an emailed statement on Monday that it is concerned about the consequences for the Arctic, Indigenous communities, and wildlife of the route becoming a regular trade lane.

"Increased commercial shipping activity will lead to increased climate impacts, increased ocean pollution and increased loss of biodiversity," said the coalition's lead advisor Sian Prior.

The group's central argument, which it set out last month when the Dubai Tower sailed, is that black carbon from burning residual fuel settles on sea ice and speeds its melting, and that neither the Arctic HFO ban nor the Northeast Atlantic emission control area adopted by the IMO in May deals with it.

Ships can still burn HFO in Arctic waters outside the ban area, Prior said, and can meet ECA sulphur limits with scrubbers or ultra low sulphur fuel oil, neither of which cuts black carbon to the levels distillates achieve.

The coalition also argues LNG is not a suitable alternative because of methane emissions across its life cycle.

It is urging Arctic states to back a polar fuels proposal co-sponsored by Denmark, Germany, France, and the Solomon Islands at the IMO, which would require ships in the Arctic to burn distillates such as MGO or zero-carbon fuels, and wants the rule applied across the wider area used by the Arctic Council's monitoring programme rather than the HFO ban zone alone.

For operators, the appeal is the other side of the same coin: a voyage half the length burns less fuel overall, which is the basis of Sea Legend's emissions claim, at a time when Red Sea diversions have lengthened conventional Asia to Europe routings.

https://shipandbunker.com/news/world/583263-northern-sea-route-to-lower-nordic-bunker-costs

The potential benefits of routing vessels via the NSR have long been realised, with Nordic Bulk Carriers A/S saying in 2012 its shipments of iron ore to China Voyages via the NSR would save 1,000 mt of fuel, and by avoiding the Middle East meant voyage insurance was less.