Competition Intensifies in Shipping's Hunt for Biofuels

Not every industry will be able to replace its current fossil fuel requirements with biofuels. File Image / Pixabay

The shipping industry is starting to face tougher competition in its plan to replace conventional bunkers with biofuels.

As part of an agreement announced this week between the European Union member states and the organisation's parliament, the jet fuel industry is now set to take a greater share of the biofuels on offer.

From 2025, at least 2% of jet fuel content for journeys from EU airports must come from sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), with that figure rising to 6% in 2030, 20% in 2035, 34% in 2040 and 70% in 2050.

This SAF content could include green hydrogen and synthetic fuels, but in the short term it will predominantly come from biofuels.

The news highlights the challenges the shipping industry will face as it takes on biofuels as an immediate way of cutting its carbon emissions.

Liquid biofuels are attractive as a drop-in replacement for conventional bunkers, requiring no engine retrofits, but the qualities that make them appealing to shipping are also drawing in other demand, with limited feedstocks available to produce them.

Those same feedstocks will also be needed to produce bio-LNG and bio-methanol, which some shipping companies are already planning on buying in large quantities.

MSC, the world's largest shipping company, highlighted the problem in an interview with Ship & Bunker this week, suggesting the limited quantities of biofuel available to the global economy should not necessarily be reserved for shipping.

"The biofuels are not the real solution, because in fact there's not enough of it," CEO Soren Toft said in the interview.

"In my opinion the biofuels should go to the aeroplanes, not the ships, because we get a much better climate impact from that."