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FuelEU: countdown to entry into force
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The FuelEU Maritime Regulation is set to launch on August 31, requiring companies to submit monitoring plans ahead of its full implementation in January 2025. With modest initial targets and sophisticated compliance mechanisms like banking, borrowing, and pooling, the scheme offers flexibility while driving innovation in sustainable maritime technologies. The scheme also offers extra incentives for companies to proactively embrace Renewable Fuels of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBOs), before mandates enter into force next decade.

Spanish government launches support scheme for hydrogen valleys
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Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) has outlined a new subsidy program to help establish valleys or clusters for renewable hydrogen production. €1.2 billion in direct capital investment assistance will be allocated across a minimum of three projects, with an auction process to launch later this year.

bp takes FID on Castellón, to acquire key stake in Oman mega-project
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In its quarterly earnings call last month, bp unveiled progress in a number of key renewable hydrogen and ammonia projects. To help decarbonise its existing refinery in Castellón, Spain, a bp and Iberdrola-led consortium has taken FID on the HyVal project. bp also revealed that it will take an equity share and act as operator for the HYPORT Duqm project: a GW-scale ammonia export project being developed in southern Oman.

R&D recap: the <i>Journal of Ammonia Energy</i>
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Ahead of the 3rd Symposium on Ammonia Energy in Shanghai next month, we take the opportunity to highlight select papers and key results from the first two editions, starting with the 2022 Cardiff event:

  • In an ammonia-diesel blending study, Orleans University and WinGD found that minimising the diesel fraction actually led to increased N2O emissions.
  • In a bid to produce an optimal ammonia-hydrogen fuel blend, a University of Birmingham team characterised the ammonia cracking mechanism of a new, transition metal-promoted lithium amide catalyst.
  • A KAUST study of swirl intensity of an ammonia-methane blended fuel finds that increasing the swirl number leads to a more compact flame, reducing NOX emissions.
  • A team from the University of Minnesota found that combustion durations comparable to gasoline were obtained for ammonia-hydrogen fuel blends.
  • And, as part of a joint academic-industry session on safety, it was recommended that a careful, proactive approach is taken towards new ammonia users, likely exposure risk points and deploying maritime ammonia fuel.