A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S’s newest methanol-powered vessel will soon set sail from South Korea as the shipping giant seeks to reduce emissions in one of the world’s most-polluting industries, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.
The Copenhagen-based firm unveiled the 350-meter-long container ship named Ane Maersk in the shipyard of Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. in Ulsan city on Thursday. It will be operational by February and is the world’s first large container ship powered by green methanol that can traverse long distances across oceans.
The vessel has capacity for 16,592 twenty-foot-equivalent-unit containers — or about 29,000 African elephants, according to the company — and will sail routes between China, other Asian nations, the Middle East and Europe.
Shipping firms worldwide are racing to overhaul their fleets as pressure intensifies, including from major customers like Amazon.com Inc. and Ikea, to reduce the industry’s emissions. The International Maritime Organization has a target of net zero emissions by 2050, though Maersk has set its ambitions on hitting that goal by 2040 with cleaner fuels a core pillar of its strategy.
“By 2030 our ambition is to have 25% of the volume that we transport to be transported using green fuels,” Leonardo Sonzio, head of fleet management and technology at Maersk, said in an interview in the vessel. “To do so we have a plan on replacing the existing fleet with vessels that can sell on green fuel.”
Maersk plans to have 25 vessels that are able to run on so-called green methanol — fuel that’s either made from biomass, like solid municipal waste, or hydrogen and carbon dioxide — through 2027. It’s already got one ship powered by green methanol, which was inaugurated last year, though that’s smaller and can only sail short distances along coastal areas.