Container ships and other maritime vessels currently run on pollutant-intensive heavy fuel oil and The world's largest container-shipping company, Maersk, has promised to make its operations zero carbon by 2050. Doing so will require using new fuels such as hydrogen.
Hydrogen vessels in use by 2030?
The quest to prove that hydrogen-powered vessels are viable is also underway in Europe. Hydrogen-powered vessels are under construction in Norway and France, also funded in part with public dollars.
The search for a cleaner, more climate-friendly maritime shipping fuel has turned up two real possibilities: liquefied natural gas and hydrogen.
Research at the U.S. Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories suggests that of the two, hydrogen is the most promising.
Using hydrogen to generate electricity is very clean. Hydrogen fuel cells combine hydrogen with oxygen and create electricity and water. The electricity can be used to turn a propeller, for example. The exhaust from fuel cells is moist air — with no greenhouse gases.
Analysts see the signs that a commercial market for such vessels exists. They says they are contacted almost continuously by ship operators wanting to know more about hydrogen vessels.
Even so, others say, it will be another decade before the shipping industry could begin to adopt hydrogen fuel cells. And, until there is more demand for fuel cell technology, hydrogen fuel will remain significantly more expensive than other, more polluting, shipping fuels.
"Technology is being tested. It's promising. I do think once it proves that it actually works, by 2025-plus, people will start ordering [new ships]," they say. "It takes three to five years to build a ship, so maybe by 2030 we will start seeing hydrogen ships."
