New cross-industry collab targets shipping decarbonization via energy efficiency, future fuels, and onboard carbon capture

The Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) have entered into a two-year coalition partnership agreement to work on decarbonizing the shipping industry with focus on energy efficiency, low-carbon future fuels, and onboard carbon capture.

Announced on June 25, the two-year partnership will see the two initiatives collaborate on energy efficiency to reduce emissions, and future fuels such as ammonia, methanol, and biofuel blends as well as onboard carbon capture and storage (OCCS) for ships.

As part of the collaboration, OGCI will bring expertise and know-how in developing land-based carbon capture projects at carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) hubs to the partnership to mature OCCS, which is at much earlier stage.

On the other hand, GCMD aims to support the decarbonization of the maritime sector through pilots and trials. Their initiatives include enabling ammonia as a marine fuel, assuring the quality, quantity and emissions abatement of drop-in green fuels, unlocking the carbon value chain through OCCS, and scaling the adoption of energy efficiency technologies.  

Most recently, GCMD’s projects include a landmark study on offloading onboard captured CO2, a report examining the propensity of biofuel degradation in marine supply chains, and a pilot addressing concerns of long-term, continuous biofuels use on vessel operations. 

The new partnership builds on an existing collaboration between OGCI and GCMD known as “Project REMARCCABLE,” an initiative to demonstrate end-to-end onboard carbon capture at scale. Phase 1 of this project is complete and findings will be published later this year.  

GCMD noted that this collaboration also further complements efforts to unlock the carbon value chain downstream from OCCS, including offloading, distribution, utilization and sequestration or utilization of onboard captured CO2. 

OGCI’s Managing Director Julien Perez said: “This partnership is a great example of cross-industry collaboration to achieve emissions reductions as it combines knowledge and expertise from two critically important industries – energy and shipping – to unlock solutions to help decarbonize this hard-to-abate sector.” 

Lynn Loo, CEO of GCMD, added: “Just as our eyes are on decarbonising shipping, we must not forget shipping’s critical role in transporting the next generation of energy from where it’s produced to where it’s needed. Our partnership with OGCI will lend an important lens on shipping’s role in the global fuel transition. As our Coalition partner, we look forward to forge pathways to build up the portfolio of viable solutions for shipping to achieve its net-zero targets.”