INTERVIEW: Wärtsilä Sees LNG as 'Only Way' for Immediate Decarbonisation

Pauluzzi sees LNG bunkering gaining further traction in the coming years. Image Credit: Wärtsilä

Maritime technology company Wärtsilä sees LNG bunkering as the natural choice for shipping firms seeking an immediate reduction in their carbon emissions.

The firm has a stake in most of the potential options for marine energy, with significant interests in LNG, scrubbers and alternative fuels including ammonia and methanol, as well as a large share of the global fleet currently running conventional bunker fuels in its engines.

The recent growth in LNG bunkering can be explained by LNG's status as a way of cutting fuel emissions in the short term while getting in a better position to take on zero-carbon fuels in the longer term, Diego Paulizzi, strategic account general manager at Wärtsilä Marine Power, said in an interview with Ship & Bunker.

"At the moment, the only way of delivering on immediate decarbonisation is to go with LNG," Pauluzzi said.

"It's available now, and you know that an engine that nowadays burns LNG will be able to be adapted to other kinds of LNG, like bio-LNG, and also to blend with hydrogen.

"Also they will be easier to convert in case they would like to choose another kind of fuel like methanol or ammonia."

LNG to Zero-Carbon Retrofits

The prospect of cheaper retrofits of that kind to change LNG-fuelled vessels into ones capable of running on methanol or ammonia could be decisive in promoting gas-powered tonnage orders, if the conversions can be shown to be achievable at a competitive cost.

"It will be for the market to decide whether or not it's economically viable, depending on the prices of fuel," Pauluzzi said.

"But the point is that if you want, you have the chance to do it, without tearing apart the ship. That's the big difference."

Methanol 

Methanol's prospects as an alternative bunker fuel have been boosted significantly in recent year's by Maersk's decision to order methanol-fuelled engines for its first zero-carbon boxships. The company has a total of 13 methanol-fuelled container ships being delivered in the next few years.

But a flurry of orders from other firms following Maersk's lead should not necessarily be expected in the immediate term unless global green methanol availability improves significantly, Pauluzzi argued.

"I think most of the companies will go along with LNG, to be honest," he said.

"With methanol I think other sectors [locally focused specialist shipping segments] will be more interested, because if you're not concerned with global availability, but you're confident with local availability, then it's much easier to think about."

Ammonia

Wärtsilä expects to have its first ammonia-fuelled ship engine ready next year. But significant further work is still needed to make ammonia a widely accepted choice as a bunker fuel, Pauluzzi said.

"Fuel is one part of the decarbonisation, but the other is efficiency," he said.

"It's very dangerous to think about the fuel as the silver bullet.

"In order to deliver on the most ambitious requirements of 2050, we will need fuels, but also new, more efficient technologies.

"We are working very, very hard in order not only to have the engine that is safe, but also to define what are the regulations.

"We are cooperating a lot with flags and classes and so on in order to make sure that everything is ready when the technology is ready."

Part of the work needed will be on making ammonia safe as a bunker fuel, to avoid potential spills being more dangerous to crew health and the environment than with conventional fuels. The work needed here will both be on the technical aspect of solving the problem, and on persuading the general public of the fuel's safety, Pauluzzi said.

"I'm pretty confident in saying that we will be able to solve the technical part," he said.

"Whether or not it will be accepted by the general public, it's a little bit more difficult to say; just think about nuclear."

Alternative Energy Sources

Despite the emergence of alternative fuels and other energy sources, Wärtsilä expects its conventional ship engines to remain a big part of the business in the coming decades. But these engines will increasingly be accompanies by other technologies, Pauluzzi said.

"The engine is an excellent platform to convert any molecule into energy, it's tested and safe," he said.

"That said, the change I expect is that it will not be the only energy source on board.

"As the years go by, what we will see is that instead of having the engine room, we will have an energy systems room, where we will have the engine with the other equipment; that can be fuel cells, to name the most prominent one, batteries, energy-saving devices of various types and so on.

"There will be an integration of different systems based on the ship's needs."