New partnership to develop guidelines for use of ammonia as a marine fuel
By on September 12, 2023
Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation, Society for Gas as a Marine Fuel
The pair announced a two-year coalition partnership in Singapore this month, focused on developing an industry-leading standard for ammonia marine fuel. SGMF will build off the success of its safety & operational guidelines for LNG bunkering, first published in 2014. For GCMD, the partnership is a significant next step after it released the results of its ammonia bunkering pilot safety study in May. Learnings from GCMD’s upcoming ship-to-ship ammonia transfer demonstration will also be incorporated into the development work.
We are confident that we can jointly contribute towards standards development of safe ammonia bunkering internationally. While ammonia vessels are not expected to be on water till 2026, we will need to ready the ecosystem for ammonia bunkering in the meantime by getting guidelines in place if bunkering of vessels is to happen then. We look forward to contributing towards SGMF’s discussions to help accelerate the uptake of low-/zero-carbon fuels by international shipping.
Professor Lynn Loo, CEO of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation in her organisation’s official press release, 7 Sept 2023
It is fantastic to see innovation in our industry from all quarters and the initiative from GCMD is one we truly support. South East Asia will always be a natural hub for bunkering and with the challenges maritime faces to de-carbonise we are pleased to see this development here. SGMF takes the responsible lead in putting safety first for the use of all low flashpoint fuels under the IGF code, not just LNG and whilst I am pleased we have completed the first lap with LNG – there are many more laps to undertake for the other candidate fuels before we can be confident we have a clear and safe passage. GCMD’s work on ammonia in particular is very welcomed in this respect and we look forward to working with this group.
Mark Bell, COO of the Society for Gas as a Marine Fuel in GCMD’s official press release, 7 Sept 2023
In March 2022, SGMF announced that it would partner with Yara to promote the use of ammonia as a marine fuel. In February 2023, this was followed by the publication of a high-level guidebook to the use of ammonia as a marine fuel in February 2023. A detailed Life Cycle Analysis of ammonia fuel is due out this year.