Rocky Mountain Institute

In this session at our 2023 annual conference, panelists discussed how unified certification will help solve the chicken and egg relationship between offtake and project development. Moderated by Vibeke Rasmussen from Yara, the discussion featured Ed Davis from the Loan Program Office (US DoE), Tomoaki Ichida from Mitsui OSK Lines, Oleksiy Tatarenko from RMI and Dolf Gielen from the World Bank Group.

Long-term offtake will be made easier with unambiguous, harmonised certification standards, which will in turn have a positive impact on ammonia projects reaching financial close. Certification schemes like the one under-development by the AEA are sorely needed to break the impasse between project development and offtake.

The state government of Queensland has signed a new agreement with the Port of Rotterdam to develop an ammonia export supply chain between Australia and the EU. The announcement comes the same week that the Port of Rotterdam authority set a target of supplying industrial centers in northwest Europe with 4.6 million tonnes of hydrogen by 2030 - the vast majority of which will need to be imported. As to the question of when those imports will begin, the Rocky Mountain Institute has released a new report indicating the EU should be ready to receive renewable hydrogen as soon as significant capacity comes online in 2024.

The maritime industry has been engaged in a frenzy of research since April 2018, when the International Maritime Organization (IMO) announced its Initial GHG Strategy mandating a 50% reduction in shipping's emissions by 2050. Three recent announcements illustrate the speed and depth of progress across a range of maritime stakeholders. In the government sector, the UK has launched its Clean Maritime Plan, which identifies ammonia as one of its strategic "clean growth opportunities." In finance, a coalition of 11 banks representing a shipping portfolio of around $100 billion has launched the Poseidon Principles to "redefine the role of banks in the maritime shipping sector." And class society ABS launched its Global Sustainability Center in Singapore to analyse, certify, and validate alternative fuels and new technologies; its Director of Global Sustainability will speak at the inaugural conference of the Ammonia Energy Association--Australia, held in Clayton, VIC, on August 22-23. His subject will be "Green ammonia as marine bunker fuel."