Marco Polo Marine to outfit its offshore wind vessels with ammonia-to-power systems

Singapore-based offshore wind vessel owner and operator, Marco Polo Marine, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Amogy, under which the New York company’s ammonia-to-power systems will be installed on Marco Polo Marine’s offshore wind vessels.

The system will be installed on Marco Polo Marine’s existing or newly built wind vessels, the company said in a press release on 18 April.

The partnership will also enable Amogy to fine-tune its solution to more effectively support the specific types of wind vessels including, but not limited to, Service Operations Vessels (SOVs) and Commissioning Service Operations Vessels (CSOVs), according to Marco Polo Marine.

The vessel owner last year entered the offshore wind markets of Taiwan and Japan, and recently also established its presence in the South Korean offshore wind market.

In September 2022, Marco Polo Marine unveiled plans to build, own and operate a CSOV by 2024 saying it wanted to meet the rising demand for support vessels from the offshore wind farm industry in Asia.

A couple of months later, the company, via its Taiwan-based subsidiary PKR Offshore, signed an MoU with Vestas Taiwan for the deployment of the vessel on offshore wind projects in the Asia Pacific region.

The region’s offshore wind capacity is forecast to expand at an annual average rate of 15.3 per cent, from 27 GW at end of 2021 to 109 GW in 2031, Marco Polo Marine said, citing findings in Fitch Solutions’ Global Offshore Wind Outlook.

The adoption of ammonia power would see a significant decrease in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from vessels such as CSOVs and SOVs, which are important support vessels in the industry, the company noted.

For Amogy, the MoU with Marco Polo Marine comes shortly after the company announced it was retrofitting a tugboat built in 1957 to enable it to run on its ammonia-to-power system. The vessel, which will be outfitted with a 1 MW version of the company’s ammonia-to-power system, is planned to be presented in late 2023.

In February this year, the Brooklyn-based startup Amogy signed a letter of intent and a lease with Sustainable Energy Catapult Center to kick-start testing operations for its ammonia-to-power platform in Norway. The tests will focus on programmes for a 200 kW powerpack prior to its installation on the tugboat later this year.

Amogy’s proprietary ammonia-to-power platform is based on ammonia-cracking technology. By extracting hydrogen onboard for fuel in a hydrogen engine, the platform is said to offer a scalable, sustainable solution to decarbonising heavy-duty vehicles and supply chains.