Pilot study will evaluate potential for ammonia fuel retrofit on open hatch ship

The pilot will include evaluating a business case for green ammonia fuel and whether green ammonia is viable as a fuel for deep-sea shipping. The partners will explore commercial, technical, infrastructure and financial workstreams. Grieg will be the pilot owner, with DNV the pilot facilitator. The Norwegian Green Shipping Program initiated the pilot, which also has the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment support. Partners include eucalyptus pulp producer Suzano and shipping company G2 Ocean.

A potential trade route for the new vessel might be between Europe, the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil, from where partner Suzano ships large amounts of their paper and pulp products.

While most projects on ammonia are looking at newbuildings, this pilot aims to retrofit one of Grieg’s eight-year-old L-class open hatch ships. As the pilot is a study, no final decision to retrofit will be made at the end. Instead, the pilot will produce a final report, and its key findings will be shared with the rest of the business regardless of conclusion.

“If the shipping world is going to achieve its decarbonising goals, we need to include solutions for the existing fleet and actively and practically address the challenges. We must solve the decarbonisation challenge. We believe in ammonia, so we will investigate how to implement it on board a specific vessel type in one particular trans-Atlantic route with the whole value chain involved. Emission reductions matter the most in deep-sea shipping, and through this pilot, we will be a part of the solution,” says Head of Grieg Star, Atle Sommer.

The Green Shipping Program brings more than 100 different players in the Norwegian maritime cluster together with the common goal of establishing the world’s most efficient and environmentally friendly shipping. The program started in 2015.