In focus: Decarbonisation gaining ever stronger foothold

Our news this week reflect the increasing activities in vessel decarbonisation and emission cutting in the oil and gas sector as offshore renewable energy continues to broaden both its geographical and technological reach and green hydrogen attracts new firm commitments.

With new, more ambitious corporate commitments and new zero-emission orders, decarbonisation efforts are going well beyond being efforts. And while projections for some (or most) geographical regions are that renewable energy capacities could fall short of reaching 2050 targets, the offshore renewables sector resumes to grow by entering new markets and bringing new innovative solutions forward.

In the oil and gas sector – whose emissions are under the biggest scrutiny and whose players have been introducing and tweaking their net-zero strategies – Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) said this week that it would accelerate its decarbonisation plan to bring forward the company’s net-zero ambition to 2045 from its previous target of 2050 and to achieve zero methane emissions by 2030.

The UAE oil and gas major says it is the first company in its peer group to speed up its net-zero target to 2045.

Vessel decarbonisation, meanwhile, has been gaining further momentum as this part of the maritime and shipbuilding industry is already seeing increased low-emission or zero-emission propulsion system orders, as well as other vessel upgrades that aim to lower its environmental footprint.

The French shipping company CMA CGM has ordered methanol-fuelled auxiliary engines from Wärtsilä for six 15,000 TEU container vessels which are being built at the Dalian Shipbuilding yard in China.

The newbuild vessels will be the first CMA CGM ordered to operate on methanol fuel as the company pursues investment in alternative fuels to decarbonise its operations.

“Our goal is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. By fitting our future fleet with methanol systems, we will be making a serious contribution towards achieving this target,” said Xavier Leclercq, Vice-President of CMA SHIPS.

Lowering emissions of vessel operations is an aim of other sectors as well, and perhaps even more so in the offshore renewable energy industry, where the clean energy being produced by wind turbines and other power generation systems is setting the bar higher in terms of carbon footprint and environmental impacts.

DeepOcean, a subsea operations specialist serving the offshore wind and oil and gas industries, is chartering a newbuild unmanned surface vessel (USV) which will be equipped with a hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system and a battery package said to allow the vessel to operate offshore for up to 30 days without charging or refuelling.

The company will use the new USV, being built by Astilleros Gondán shipyard in Spain, for subsea inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) and survey work in the offshore renewables and oil & gas industries.

According to DeepOcean, it is estimated that the USV solution can reduce CO2 emissions by more than 90% compared to a conventional offshore vessel when conducting subsea IMR operations.

Meanwhile, lowering emissions of entire energy systems requires major governmental involvement, long-term planning and strategies that in the era of the energy transition inevitably revolve around renewable energy sources, clean fuels, energy carriers and storage.

The Netherlands, which recently announced an ambitious target for offshore wind, is set to move forward with its hydrogen plans too after the European Commission (EC) approved the country’s €246 million scheme to support the production of renewable hydrogen and the construction of at least 60 MW electrolysis capacity.

The aid, which will take the form of a direct grant for a 7-to-15-year period, will be awarded through a competitive bidding process planned to be concluded in 2023. The tender will be open to all companies established in the European Economic Area and operating, or wishing to build and operate, a hydrogen production unit in the Netherlands.

The measure aims to contribute to the development of renewable hydrogen in line with the objectives of the EU Hydrogen Strategy and the European Green Deal. The scheme will also contribute to the objectives of the REPowerEU Plan to end dependence on Russian fossil fuels and fast forward the green transition.

In the Philippines, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Energy (DOE) have started working on updating the offshore wind and floating solar guidelines so they would become components of next year’s National Expenditure Program (NEP).

“I think what’s also very important is to take note of our energy roadmap because, for us, at this point, we would like to see the transitions, of course, that we all need to actually support in terms of the movement towards renewable energy sources,” said the country’s environment secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga.

According to the World Bank’s Offshore Wind Roadmap, released in April 2022, the Philippines has the potential to deploy as much as 21 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040 and 40 GW by 2050.

This April, the Philippines’ Department of Energy said that it had allocated as many as 63 OSW SCs with a total potential capacity of 49.9 GW by that time. The same month, the Philippines’ President, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., issued an executive order directing the Department of Energy to put together a policy and administrative framework for offshore wind development and to commence work related to grid development.

In the news from other renewable energy industries, technological advancements continue to take the front seat with one of the latest, and perhaps most interesting, updates coming from France, where EEL Energy has deployed its biomimetic tidal energy turbine in the Rhône river near Lyon.

Built as a floating device, the technology captures kinetic energy from rivers or tidal currents near the water surface where the highest water velocity is typically found. The tidal energy converter has been designed to replicate the undulating movements of marine life, consisting of a membrane that optimises energy transfer by coupling fluid flow with an undulating structure.

EEL Energy’s turbine, the first of four planned to be deployed, is said to be foreshadowing the future where fluvial clean energy farms significantly contribute to decarbonisation and diversification of the power generation mix.