One Of Oil’s Biggest Purchasers Is Moving Up Net-Zero Targets

Container shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, a major consumer of oil products, pledged on Wednesday to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its entire business by 2040, a decade earlier than the previous 2050 target.   

The more ambitious target aims to align Maersk with a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway and the net-zero criteria of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and cover all emission scopes, including its own, the energy it uses, and the supply chain.  

The shipping giant will increasingly use green marine and aviation fuels to reach the net-zero target, it said.

A total of 25 percent of all cargo will be transported using green fuels, Maersk said, adding that it continues to see opportunities to develop green marine fuels.  

Last month, Maersk introduced the design of its eight 16,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) container vessels powered by carbon-neutral methanol, which allows for 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency per transported container, when comparing to the industry average for vessels of this size. The new vessel series is set to offer Maersk’s customers “carbon-neutral transportation at scale on ocean trades,” the company said in December. 

Maersk looks to introduce those vessels running on carbon-neutral methanol in 2023-2025.

Last year, Copenhagen-based Maersk picked its partners to produce green fuel for its first vessel to operate on carbon-neutral methanol: REintegrate, a subsidiary of Danish renewable energy company European Energy.

REintegrate and European Energy will establish a new Danish facility to produce around 10,000 tons of carbon-neutral e-methanol that Maersk’s first vessel with the ability to operate on green e-methanol will consume annually.   

“Sourcing the fuels of the future is a significant challenge, and we need to be able to scale production in time,” Henriette Hallberg Thygesen, CEO of Fleet & Strategic Brands, A.P. Moller-Maersk, said in August.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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