< Back

Green Shipping Corridor-Driven Life Cycle Analysis for Alternative Marine Fuels

Date and Time: June21: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: NAS 120

Kirk Waltz
Director, Business Development - Clean Energy Transition, American Bureau of Shipping (ABS)
KirkHWaltz

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Kirk Waltz is an Environmental Engineer with fifteen plus years of experience as an environmental consultant in heavy industry. His consulting work has included supporting regulatory agencies, operating and maintaining water resources infrastructure, managing remediation in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, and decarbonization in the maritime industry. His work has spanned the industry carbon lifecycle from wellfield extraction, refining, energy production, propulsion to disposal, capture and sequestration. Kirk is the capture lead for ABS’s contribution to the Department of Energy’s Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs Earthshot focused on the development of demonstration project opportunities for alternative fuels and alternative power options deployment in the marine, maritime and offshore industries.

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

The United States is setting a course to improve local and international green shipping corridors (GSCs) in support of the goal to attain zero greenhouse gas emissions from the international shipping industry. GSCs have been identified as an effective green shipping practice to accelerate the maritime decarbonization process. To improve the robustness of maritime emission estimations, a lifecycle analysis (LCA), which involves the estimation of well-to-tank and tank-to-wake of the fuel-related emissions and is the commonly accepted norm for estimating the impact of each value chain, will be conducted. The authors developed a GSC framework to evaluate the effects of GSCs on GHG emissions for the supply chain of three promising alternative fuels (methanol, ammonia and hydrogen). The emissions reduction impacts of these fuels are quantitively analyzed to identify their achievement levels of the International Maritime Organization (IMO’s) 2030 and 2050 GHG emissions reduction goals. Also, detailed investigations will involve estimating the current baseline GHG emissions for selected corridors (“Grey Corridors or Business as usual corridors”) followed by estimation of the global warming potential performance for identified alternative pathways. It is expected that the study will give additional insights into how these green pathways could play a critical role in maritime decarbonization and what variables are expected to have an outsized impact on emissions. The results of this study could be a valuable resource for developing a shipping decarbonization strategy. 

PRESENTATION FILE