Sustainable Marine Fuel initiative consortium to launch 2-year testing, certification, scaling effort for drop-in marine biofuels

In the Netherlands, the Sustainable Marine Fuel initiative will be launched on October 7th by Boskalis, Wärtsilä, and GoodFuels Marine and supported by Carbon War Room, Zero and both the Ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. This consortium has been established to help overcome the challenges facing the development of such a market. The 2-year program aims to accelerate the acceptance of marine biofuels by:

• Extensive testing of various types of next generation biofuels.

• Gaining certification of marine biofuel types once proven technically compliant and sustainable so that they can be freely used by anyone.

• Performing a global scaling study to assess the supply and market potential of sustainable marine biofuels.

GoodFuels Marine notes that 90% of all global trade is transported by ship, and he shipping industry contributes significantly to global emissions: up to 4% CO2, 10-15% NOx and 5-9% SOx.With trade volumes expected to increase steadily of the next decades, shipping is on course to become the fifth largest source of manmade CO2, and the largest source of SOx and NOx. Drop-in biofuels, the company notes, offer a combination of SOx, NOx and CO2 emission reductions that no other fuel can achieve without the need for capital-intensive fleet renewal or retrofitting, suitable for use on any type of ship with any type of usage profile.

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