Shipping looks to hydrogen as it seeks to ditch bunker fuel

From FT by Harry Dempsey

Discord within oil-reliant industry over how to power the workhorses of global trade in the net zero era

The Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo launched its first steam-powered ship, the SS Leopold, on its maiden trip from Antwerp to Congo in 1895.
Today CMB, the colonial-era group’s successor, carries commuters between the Belgian city and nearby Kruibeke on a ferry fuelled by hydrogen.

“This is the fourth energy revolution in shipping — from rowing our boats to sails to steam engine to diesel engine and we have to change it once more,” said Alex Saverys, CMB chief executive and scion of one of Belgium’s oldest shipping families.

Shipping produces about 3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and without action its contribution is likely to rise for decades as global trade grows.
The International Maritime Organization, the UN agency that regulates the global industry, wants to at least halve its impact by 2050.

Many industry figures are pinning their hopes on blue or green hydrogen — produced using natural gas with carbon capture or renewable electricity and whose only byproduct when combusted is water — to help steer away from polluting bunker fuel.
“There is no question whether hydrogen will be the energy carrier of shipping in 2050,” said Lasse Kristoffersen, chief executive of Norway’s Torvald Klaveness.
“The question is, how do you produce it and which form do you use it as a carrier?”  

 

But other executives operating the huge hulks that criss-cross the planet transporting everything from raw materials to consumer goods are sceptical hydrogen can play more than a bit part in the fuel transition.

 

While pilot projects such as CMB’s prove the fuel is viable at small scale on set routes with refuelling infrastructure in place, 85 per cent of the sector’s emissions come from bulk carriers, oil tankers and container ships, according to analysis by Royal Dutch Shell.

Nothing can power them as efficiently and cheaply as fossil fuels.

“This is not going to be an easy sector to decarbonise,” said Bud Darr, executive vice-president at Mediterranean Shipping Company, the world’s second-largest container shipping group.
“Ocean shipping’s need for autonomy requires us to carry a large amount of fuel.
We need a range of alternative fuels at scale and we need them urgently.
We’re keeping an open mind and exploring all possible solutions.”

Hydrogen has low energy density compared with heavy fuel oil.
Storing it in its liquid form below -253C requires heavy cryogenic tanks that take up precious space, rendering it unfeasible for large cargo ships.
“With the current state of technology, we cannot use hydrogen to fuel our vessels,” said Morten Bo Christiansen, head of decarbonisation at AP Moller-Maersk, MSC’s larger rival.

However, the industry has grown increasingly optimistic about using ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, to fuel the workhorses of global trade without belching out greenhouse gases.
Though foul-smelling and toxic, ammonia is easy to liquefy, is already transported worldwide at scale and has nearly twice the energy density of liquid hydrogen.
“The cleanest, most realistic transport fuels of the future are hydrogen-based fuels including green ammonia,” said Rasmus Bach Nielsen, global head of fuel decarbonisation at commodity trader Trafigura.

Engine makers believe the technology is within reach.
Finland’s Wärtsilä said it would be ready to scale up ammonia-ready engines by the end of next year, while Germany’s Man Energy Solutions plans to deliver an ammonia-powered oil tanker in 2024.
Both said that until supply infrastructure was in place, new engines would also need to be compatible with bunker fuel.
Almost all of the 176m tonnes of ammonia produced a year, mostly for fertiliser, currently uses “grey” hydrogen extracted from natural gas in an energy intensive process that emits CO2.

Producing carbon-free ammonia at scale is a challenging task.
About 150m tonnes would be needed to meet 30 per cent of shipping’s fuel demand by 2050, according to a report by catalysis company Haldor Topsoe.
That would require 1,500 terawatt hours of renewable energy, roughly equivalent to all of last year’s global wind power output.
Pockets of the shipping industry are now calling for a global carbon levy to accelerate production and adoption of next-generation fuels.
“Technology is there and ready,” said Bach Nielsen.
“Now we need regulation.” However, with the IMO’s 174 member states including oil producers and commodity exporters, reaching agreement on a carbon price is no easy task.

The EU is set to make proposals in June to include shipping in its emissions trading scheme but shipping executives believe a global carbon tax would have to be several times higher than the EU’s current record prices above €47 a tonne to make hydrogen-based fuels competitive.
Any transition to hydrogen or hydrogen-based fuels is likely to be a lengthy process given the industry’s caution in shifting to a less-polluting fossil fuel.
Even now, only 11 per cent of new vessels on order will be primarily powered by liquefied natural gas, according to consultancy Drewry.

Medium-term decarbonisation efforts by the biggest shipping companies are primarily focused on low-carbon synthetic fuels and biofuels.
Maersk, which plans to launch its first carbon-neutral vessel in 2023, is backing methanol — either biomethanol derived from waste matter such as wood or e-methanol produced from captured CO2 and green hydrogen.
France’s CMA CGM is investing in biomethane.
Both are compatible with existing engines.

Detractors say biomass resources required for biomethanol are limited, and that production can lead to environmental problems such as deforestation and water degradation.
They also point to the fact that while synthetic fuels absorb CO2 when produced, they emit it again when burnt.
“Why on earth should we release CO2 into fuels when we have captured it in the first place?” asked Kristoffersen of Torvald Klaveness.

To many minds, that leaves hydrogen in some form at the core of any long-term vision to decarbonise shipping.
Few, however, can predict with confidence how quickly it might happen.
“We would expect technical challenges to be solved within the next few years,” said Jan Dieleman, head of ocean transportation at US grain trader Cargill.
“The main challenge is the regulatory framework, as even large-scale production of these fuels will always be more expensive than fossil fuels.
If we want to decarbonise shipping, we will need regulations to drive the change.”

Huge superyacht squeezes down narrow Dutch canals

Huge superyacht squeezes through narrow canals

Photographer Tom van Oossanen captured footage of a massive yacht being transported through tiny canals in Holland.

The ship was built by a Dutch company at their shipyard in Kaag and it's on its way to Amsterdam where it will undergo sea trials.

 

From CNN by Tamara Hardingham-Gill

It's not every day you see a gigantic superyacht weaving through the narrow canals of the Netherlands.
Thankfully photographer Tom van Oossanen was on hand to capture the astonishing scenes as Project 817, a 94-meter (310 feet) vessel built by Dutch shipyard Feadship, was transported from its Kaag Island facility to the North Sea at Rotterdam last week.
In a series of stunning images, the vessel, one of the largest to be launched in 2021, is guided through the water with tugboats, passing by houses and churches, as crowds look on in amazement.
According to Oossanen, around four to six superyachts are transferred along this route each year before going for sea trials, which usually take place in Amsterdam.
However, few are as big as Project 817, likely to be known as Viva when it officially launches.

Feadship's new superyacht Project 817 is guilded through the canals of Holland while en route to the North Sea.

Courtesy Tom van Oossanen

 

"It's always quite an operation," Oossanen tells CNN Travel.
"Everyone loves to see it."
But these maneuvers lead to serious snarl ups on land and water.
Got a dentist appointment?

"Then you're not going to make it," says Oossanen.

"Sometimes it takes an hour to go through a bridge, and with the amount of traffic we have in Holland, it soon builds up."

Kaag Island is one of two Feadship shipyards based inland (the other is in Aalsmeer, near Schiphol,) which means every yacht delivered from here has to be painstakingly pulled the same way.

Tight fit

The 94-meter vessel is maneuvered across a bridge in Woubrugge during the tricky journey.

Courtesy Tom van Oossanen

 

"They [the two shipyards] are actually quite far from the North Sea, so in order to transport the yachts to sea, they need to pass a small canal to Rotterdam," he explains.
"There's only one way to go."
Some parts of the canals along the route are only a few feet wider than Project 817, which spans 44.7 feet from port to starboard, so to say the transfer required great care and attention is something of an understatement.

"This boat has been fully designed to actually fit the waterway," says Oossanen, pointing out that he's only ever seen four superyachts of this size taking this same journey.
"So they [the designers] probably couldn't add another centimeter to her length or another centimeter to her width.

"They maximized the design by using the limitations of bridges and waterways, which is quite interesting."
Feadship says the duration of a transfer is dependent on several different factors, such as the winds and bridge schedules, and can take between two to four days.
The transportation of Project 817 took around four days.

A superyacht is usually guided to sea by a team of five experts and a crew on board, according to Feadship.

Courtesy Tom van Oossanen

 

During the first stage of the operation, Viva was moved from the Kaag Island shipyard to Lake Braassemermeer, where it was fitted with pontoons to raise it up, thus ensuring it wasn't too deep to maneuver through the canals.

Tug boats were then attached to the pontoons on either side of the superyacht, which was also wrapped with protective foil, in order to guide the vessel through the water with precision.

By this point, it was ready to be pushed and pulled along the canals, making its way across a small bridge in the tiny village of Woubrugge, as well as Alphen aan den Rijn, a town in the west of Holland, before reaching the Dutch city Gouda, located south of Amsterdam, a few days later.

A team of five experts and a crew on board usually guide a superyacht to the sea, according to Feadship.

Tricky transfer

Project 817 passes through the Albert Schweitzer Bridge in Alphen aan den Rijn.

Courtesy Tom van Oossanen

 

"It takes a long time," says Oossanen.

"No one is in any rush, because you don't want to scratch the paint."

He explains that Feadship uses the same transport company and tug boat drivers for each delivery in order to ensure a smooth transition.

"They [the captains] are very experienced in what they're doing," he says.
"There's obviously a lot of money involved, so you want to do things properly.
And if you're going to rush things, things can go wrong."
It's perhaps no surprise that the transfer of Project 817 caused quite a stir on the ground, particularly while passing through the smaller villages along the way.
Some onlookers were absolutely bewildered by the sight of such a huge yacht in transit on the canal.

"People were actually asking questions like 'why would someone cruise his boat here?'" says Oossanen, who followed Viva for the first two days of the transportation.
"Obviously it's not cruising.
She's going to sea and she will never come back again."
While Oossanen has photographed many such transfers, he stresses that no shoot is the same, and he's constantly trying to come up with new ways to showcase the vessels.
"Every boat is different," he says.
"It's always the same route, but I always try to find different angles.
"It's a challenge to picture it in a different way. I'm really glad this one worked out so well."

Last hurrah?

Photographer Tom van Oossanen was on hand to capture the painstaking transportation.

Courtesy Tom van Oossanen

The photographer was particularly keen to document this journey, as he believes it may be the last time a vessel of this size is transported along this route.

Feadship opened a new facility in Amsterdam that has the capacity to build superyachts up to 160 meters long.
And a 140-meter dry dock has been fitted to its Makkum shipyard, allowing for the construction of yachts with wider beams.

The Dutch government has also confirmed plans to widen the locks at nearby Kornwerderzand, which ultimately means larger vessels will be able to sail directly from Makkum to the North Sea in the future.
"They can easily build up to 160 meters in a new facility, so why would they still transfer such a big boat through all these canals and go through all the hassle?" notes Oossanen.

All of the vessels from Feadship's Kaag yard must take this narrow route in order to reach the sea.

Courtesy Tom van Oossanen

"Knowing the inside information, I think seeing a 94-meter doing this route is either going to take a while, or might not happen [again] at all."
Designed by Azure Yacht Design & Naval Architecture and De Voogt, Viva, which features a hybrid propulsion system, is a particularly striking sight to behold thanks to its pearl-white livery.
"By the time she's fully unwrapped, washed and cleaned, you're going to see her in the sun and she's going to twinkle like a star," he adds.

A Dutch superyacht has completed its four day passage through a narrow canal while passing through to the North Sea for testing.

At 94 metres long, it is the largest possible vessel which can pass through.

Tom van Oossanen, a superyacht photographer who captured the footage, said: 'The designers face limitations due to the narrow waterways and bridges. It's always a tight squeeze. The locals usually love it. It's very instagrammable' 

Feadship confirmed to CNN Travel that the vessel successfully reached Rotterdam and will soon be ready for sea trials.
Project 817 will be closely followed by a number of significant superyachts currently under construction in the Netherlands.
Heeson's 60-meter Project Falcon, the shipyard's largest steel yacht so far, is due to launch in the coming months, while Oceanco's 117-meter Project Y719 is also expected at some point this year.
Meanwhile, work is still underway on Feadship's 95-meter Project 1009, which is currently in the final stage of construction.

Changes to giant ocean eddies could have ‘devastating effects’ globally

Giant eddies ranging from 10km to 100km across are intensifying in the South Ocean, one of the world’s biggest natural carbon stores. Researchers are concerned this could have grave effects for the world.

Photograph: EKE

 

From The Guardian by Graham Readfearn 

Swirling and meandering ocean currents that help shape the world’s climate have gone through a “global-scale reorganisation” over the past three decades, according to new research.

The amount of energy in these ocean currents, which can be from 10km to 100km across and are known as eddies, has increased, having as yet unknown affects on the ocean’s ability to lock-away carbon dioxide and heat from fossil fuel burning.

One expert said the changes described in the research could affect the ability of the Southern Ocean, one of the world’s biggest natural carbon stores, to absorb CO2.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, analysed the temperature and height of the ocean with the help of data from altimeters on satellites from 1993 until 2020.

Like clouds and storms in the atmosphere, eddies are like weather events in the oceans happening from the surface down to a depth of several hundreds metres.The research found that eddies were intensifying in places where they are known to be most active.

As well as detecting changes in the Southern Ocean, the research also found changes in the southern Atlantic, the east Australian current.

Eddies form when a bend in a surface ocean current lengthens and eventually makes a loop, which separates from the main current.
Ocean eddies trap water inside them. In the Atlantic Ocean, eddies can move warm water north into the polar regions. 

They found a significant increase in eddy strength over the Southern Ocean, as well as significant changes in their activity over the boundary currents – the intense flows of water along the boundaries of the major ocean basins, such as the Gulf Stream and the East Australian Current.

Lead researcher Josué Martínez Moreno, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and Australian National University, said the eddies were constantly merging and detaching from more permanent ocean currents.

The eddies played a “profound role” in moving heat, carbon and nutrients through the ocean and regulating the climate at regional and global scales, the research said.

Martínez Moreno said the research had revealed “a global-scale reorganisation of the ocean’s energy over the past three decades”.

Changing ocean mesoscale currents

The paper did not attempt to attribute the changes to human activity, but Martínez Moreno said they could have far-reaching effects on the world’s climate, and also on fisheries.

Getting a better understanding of the changes in ocean eddies could also improve climate change projections, he said.

As well as absorbing about 90% of global heating since the 1970s, the ocean has pulled in about 40% of the extra carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, mainly from fossil fuel burning, since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

A co-author of the study, Prof Matthew England, of the Climate Change Research centre at the University of New South Wales, said: “We know these eddies play an important role in the climate, but how this intensification might change a given weather pattern is hard to say.

“To see it changing at this scale to me is confronting,” he said. “To see these changes shows how much we are perturbing the system. There will be impacts on our climate and ecosystems that we will have to explore now.”

Solving the puzzle of how these ocean eddies were changing was “one of the last frontiers” in understanding how climate change could be affecting the ocean, he said.

Dr Janet Sprintall, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, who was not involved in the research, said the findings were “a great step forward.”

She said: “The world’s oceans soak up most of the carbon dioxide that humans dump into the atmosphere. The Southern Ocean in particular absorbs about 40% of the entire ocean uptake and much of that uptake is achieved by ocean eddies.”

Any change in the ocean eddies in the Southern Ocean, she said, can “potentially impact the carbon sink and the ability to uptake carbon that we might continue to emit in the future”.

“This could have devastating effects on global society.”

The research came after the United Nations released its second assessment on the world’s oceans on Wednesday, cataloguing a swathe of impacts on what UN secretary general António Guterres said was the planet’s “life support system”.

Sea levels were rising, coasts were eroding, waters were heating and acidifying and the number of deoxygenated “dead zones” was rising.

Marine litter was present in all marine habitats, the report said, and overfishing was costing societies billions.About 90% of mangrove, seagrass and marsh plant species were threatened with extinction, the report said.

The report said there had been progress in protecting more marine areas, but there were still many scientific knowledge gaps to be filled.

 

Links :

• The Guardian : Marine species increasingly can’t live at equator due to global heating / Climate crisis pushing great white sharks into new waters
•  The Conversation : Satellites reveal ocean currents are getting stronger, with potentially significant implications for climate change

120 years of earthquakes and their tsunamis: 1901-2020

 

This animation shows every recorded earthquake in sequence as they occurred from January 1, 1901, through December 31, 2020, at a rate of 1 year per second.

The earthquake hypocenters first appear as flashes then remain as colored circles before shrinking with time so as not to obscure subsequent earthquakes.

The size of each circle represents the earthquake’s magnitude while the color represents its depth within the earth.

This animation also highlights significant tsunamis generated by some of these earthquakes.

When the following earthquakes appear they will also have their tsunami’s “energy map” that shows each tsunami's  maximum modeled wave heights on the open ocean:

8.8 — Ecuador-Columbia — 31 January 1906
8.5 — Atacama, Chile — 11 November 1922
8.4 — Kamchatka, Russia — 3 February 1923
8.4 — Sanriku, Japan — 2 March 1933
8.6 — Unimak Island, Aleutian Islands — 1 April 1946*
9.0 — Kamchatka, Russia — 4 November 1952
8.6 — Andreanof Islands, Aleutian Islands — 9 March 1957*
9.5 — Valdivia, Chile — 22 May 1960*
9.2 — Prince William Sound, Alaska — 28 March 1964*
8.7 — Rat Islands, Aleutian Islands — 4 February 1965
7.7 — Kalapana, Hawaii — 29 November 1975*
8.4 — Southern Peru — 23 June 2001
9.1 — Sumatra, Indonesia — 26 December 2004*
8.1 — Samoan Islands — 29 September 2009*
8.8 — Maule, Chile — 27 February 2010*
9.0 — Tohoku, Japan — 11 March 2011*
7.9 — Haida Gwaii, Canada — 28 October 2012*

Note that while the great majority of all earthquakes occur at plate boundaries, these tsunami-causing earthquakes mostly occur at convergent plate boundaries.

These boundaries, also called “subduction zones,” are where tectonic plates collide to produce megathrust earthquakes and are the regions where we expect future devastating tsunamis to come from.

Other, much smaller earthquakes also occur away from plate boundaries such as those related to volcanic activity in Hawaii or those related to wastewater injection wells in Oklahoma.

The animation concludes with a series of summary maps.

The first one shows all of the earthquakes in this 120-year period.

The next map shows only those earthquakes known to have produced a tsunami, and the map after that shows only those earthquakes that produced damaging tsunamis.

The final map shows the plate boundary faults responsible for the majority of  these earthquakes.

The era of modern seismology—the scientific study of earthquakes—began with the invention of the seismograph in the late 19th Century and its deployment in instrument networks in the early 20th Century to record and measure earthquakes as they occur.

Therefore, when the animation begins only the largest earthquakes will appear.

They were the only ones that could be detected at great distances with the few instruments available at the time.

But as time progressed, more and more seismographs were deployed and smaller and smaller earthquakes could be recorded.

For example, the installation of these instruments in California in the 1930s creates the illusion of new earthquake activity there.

Likewise, there appears to be a jump in the number of earthquakes globally in the 1970’s when seismology took another leap forward with advances in telecommunications and digital signal processing, a trend that continues today.

SailGP launches second season with Oracle Cloud Technologies that elevate race performance, captivate fans

 

From Oracle

 

Powerful, enhanced analytics bring teams and fans deeper race insights and put them aboard a virtual F50 catamaran

 

Oracle and SailGP, sailing’s premier racing league, have expanded their successful data analytics platform leading into the second season. SailGP taps Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to deliver real-time data to each of the league’s eight national teams as well as to broadcast partners and fans worldwide.

New features added this season will improve team performance and give fans a thrilling crews-eye view of the action.

 

 

“Our cutting-edge, global league continues to push the boundaries of what is possible, both on and off the water,” said Russell Coutts, SailGP CEO. 

“For Season 2, we’re working on a number of new cloud-based innovations with Oracle to truly enhance the viewer experience and create efficiencies in the way we operate across all aspects of our business.

The results are remarkable, especially on race days which are the ultimate showcase of data, technology and invention.”

SailGP will turn to Oracle Stream Analytics this season to provide real-time race metrics.

Using sophisticated correlation patterns, data enrichment and machine learning, Oracle Stream Analytics makes autonomous decisions based on the 30,000 data points an F50 catamaran sends every second of a race.

Oracle Stream Analytics blends and transforms disparate data into one stream, down from the 10 streams SailGP shared in its first season.

This allows teams to easily customize their data dashboards with relevant tactical information, including open-source data from rival teams, and determine optimal in-race strategies in an instant.

The streamed data is also used to create unique second-screen experiences.

Fans will gain a deeper understanding of the teams’ actions during a race through instantaneous updates of key performance metrics and the enhanced data dashboards on the SailGP app and on SailGP.com.

 

OCI will deliver the expected 80 billion data requests generated over the course of the eight races to Oracle’s London cloud region for analysis and worldwide distribution, all within two-tenths of a second. Live video and audio feeds taken aboard the F50s are streamed to the cloud region for immediate broadcast, and simultaneously stored in Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse.

SailGP production teams at league headquarters use this information to create content for distribution across 175 broadcast territories.

Season 2 marks the first time SailGP will coordinate all data and production activities for each race remotely, significantly reducing the costs and the environmental impact of traveling large crews and equipment to each event.

“SailGP is one of the most data-rich sports leagues in the world, and data is in Oracle’s DNA,” said Ariel Kelman, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Oracle. 

“The differentiator in our collaboration this season is the advancements in extracting meaningful information from massive amounts of data and the mind boggling speed at which it’s done. Once other sports organizations realize what SailGP can accomplish, they’ll quickly understand the advantages of having an aggressive and comprehensive strategy for delivering real-time data and insights to both teams and fans.”

Oracle Cloud will also power a new SailGP simulator.

With training restricted to a few days before each event, the simulator allows teammates to virtually race the F50s from any location.

Based on a Dynamic Velocity Prediction Program using Season 1 data, and visualization technology hosted in an Oracle virtual graphics workstation, athletes can take the helm, grinder, wing trimmer or flight controller positions and work through different set-ups and race conditions.

Sailing aficionados will be able to experience the exhilaration of the virtual F50 at future SailGP events where they can compete against a computer generated boat or compete against each other.

SailGP also enters its second season of competition with a renewed relationship with Oracle.

“After a thrilling opening season where we witnessed teams break the 50 knot barrier and set speed records using the real-time data and analytics delivered by Oracle Cloud, I am delighted that SailGP is extending its partnership with Oracle as the league’s global data analytics partner for three more years,” Coutts said.

“Having access to Oracle’s global infrastructure allows us to rapidly process incredibly large amounts of internal data and automate repeatable tasks, improve predictions, and identify issues and performance differences between teams.”
“What SailGP and Oracle have accomplished in our short time working together is extraordinary, and this season is set up to surpass that,” Kelman added. 

“I look forward to achieving new milestones as we continue on the path we started.”

SailGP Season 2 commences in Bermuda on April 24-25, 2021.

 

Links :

• Oracle : SailGP drafts Oracle Cloud to boost team performance, wow fans