LONDON: April 11, 2019: A report by consultant thinkstep for the Society for Gas as a Marine Fuel (SGMF) and SEA/LNG, a multisector industry coalition, claims the use of LNG can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 21 percent compared with current marine fuels.
It also confirms that emissions of other local pollutants over the entire life-cycle from Well-to-Wake (WtW) such as sulphur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM), are close to zero when using LNG compared with current conventional oil-based marine fuels.
[This] “Life Cycle GHG Emission Study is a long-awaited piece of the ‘LNG as a marine fuel’ puzzle,” declared SEA\LNG chairman Peter Keller. “It not only confirms what we already knew in terms of LNG’s immediate impact on air quality, human health and its cleanliness, but clearly highlights the genuine, substantiated GHG benefits of using today’s marine engines capable of burning natural gas.”
The report says ongoing optimisation in supply chain and engine technology developments will further enhance the benefits of LNG as a marine fuel while bioLNG and Synthetic LNG - both fully interchangeable with LNG derived from fossil feedstock - can reduce GHG emissions by a further 13percent when compared to 100 percent fossil fuel LNG.
Oliver Schuller, team lead Energy & Mobility at thinkstep said the main goal of the study was to provide an accurate report of the life-cycle GHG emissions from LNG as a marine fuel compared with conventional marine fuels.
The company based its conclusions on data provided by OEMs including Caterpillar MaK, Caterpillar Solar Turbines, GE, MAN Energy Solutions, Rolls Royce (MTU), Wärtsilä, and Winterthur Gas & Diesel, as well as major fossil fuel suppliers ExxonMobil, Shell, and Total.
Schuller said the results are quality assured in assessing the supply and use of LNG as a marine fuel according to ISO standards “having been peer-reviewed by leading academics from key institutions in France, Germany, Japan and the USA."
