In focus: Activists take the front line against fossil fuels, as maritime industry steps up clean fuels game

‘Actions, not words’ is the phrase that perfectly summarises the general feeling of environmental activists who filled the headlines this week by taking the front lines of the fight against the fossil fuels industry and its supporters. Living up to their creed, however, is the maritime sector which has also stepped up efforts on a global level to accelerate the adoption of more environmentally-friendly, clean fuels.

The week behind us started with headlines about activists from Greenpeace blocking a Russian oil tanker from offloading oil in a Norwegian port, urging the government to ban the imports of Russian fossil fuels.

In protest against the war, the activists in kayaks and boats blocked the oil tanker Ust Luga, preventing it from offloading oil in the Slagentangen oil port owned by Esso, a Norwegian subsidiary of U.S.-based ExxonMobil, and demanded that Esso cancels its contracts to buy fossil fuels from Russia.

Even though it still has not banned Russian oil imports, the EU is working to become independent from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030, starting with gas.

Following in these footsteps, Germany recently started discussions with a Dutch exploration and production company, ONE-Dyas, related to potential natural gas production in the North Sea in an effort to reduce the country’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

However, activists are clearly stating their opposition to all new fossil fuel projects. On Wednesday, 27 April, the German activist group Letzte Generation (Last Generation) turned off crude oil pipelines in several places in Germany, thus interrupting the flow of oil.

The action was meant to prompt a statement from the Vice-Chancellor of Germany and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action that there will be no new fossil infrastructure projects and, specifically, oil drilling in the North Sea.

The North Sea – though Dutch part of it – is currently buzzing with the construction of the first subsidy-free offshore wind farm. Dubbed Hollande Kust Zuid, the 1.5GW project is expected to start feeding electricity to the Dutch grid in early May.

Once commissioned in the summer of 2023, Hollandse Kust Zuid will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm in operation.

It is also worth mentioning that the European Commission made available €100 million through its Innovation Fund for small-scale projects focusing on innovative technologies in renewable energy, heavy industry, energy storage, and carbon capture.

As activists increase the pressure on governments to stop new fossil fuel projects, the development of clean fuels for the shipping industry is pressing ahead.

This week, we saw the maritime sector stepping up efforts to become fossil-free by establishing green hydrogen and ammonia hubs in Norway and Egypt.

Namely, Danish Everfuel and Norwegian energy company Greenstat formed a joint venture to set up a hydrogen hub in Norway, called Hydrogen Hub Agder. The hydrogen production facility will be accompanied by a distribution centre targeting the shipping segment.

Another hydrogen hub for maritime transport, the Green Artic HyHub, is to be set up in Nordland, Norway by HYON, Gen2 Energy AS and ASCO Norway. The companies applied for soft funding from Enova for a project set to produce cost-competitive compressed green hydrogen at a large scale, making it available to fuel several types of vessels in Nordland.

Down in Africa, Egypt is preparing to host the COP27 summit in November. Coinciding with the preparations, the country is looking to diversify its energy mix.

As part of this effort, the government units entered into a number of memorandums of understanding (MoUs) to develop green hydrogen and green ammonia production plants in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) and on the Mediterranean coast.

One of the MoUs was signed by the Green Fuel Alliance consortium and the Egyptian government plan to develop a 350,000 tonnes per year green ammonia facility to be used as bunkering fuel to serve the Suez Canal maritime traffic.

The government units also entered into an agreement with Abu Dhabi’s Masdar and investment platform Hassan Allam Utilities to establish green hydrogen production plants with an electrolyzer capacity of 4 GW by 2030 and an output of up to 480,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year.