Green Seas: A podcast by TradeWinds TradeWinds

Ammonia is tantalising as a shipping fuel because it has no carbon, but the first vessels planned for 2026 are just one step in a longer journey. We talk to Robert Tustin of Lloyd’s Register, Brian Ostergaard Sorensen of MAN Energy Solutions and Christos Chryssakis of DNV.

Biofuels are proving an easy way to cut the well-to-wake greenhouse gas footprint of existing ships, but demand for them is limited amid high costs. We speak to Cargill’s Olivier Josse, Eagle Bulk Shipping’s Jonathan Dowsett and Quadrise Fuels International’s Jason Miles to understand the role biofuels will play in shipping’s decarbonisation journey.

When a global sulphur cap was imposed on shipping in 2020, technology stepped in to allow companies to take the pollutant out of vessels’ ship exhaust. Will carbon capture play the same role as the industry grapples with greenhouse gas emissions?

We hear from Sigurd Jenssen, director of exhaust gas cleaning systems at Wartsila, and Georgios Plevrakis, vice president of global sustainability at American Bureau of Shipping.

As shipping grapples with its greenhouse gas emissions, industry stakeholders often point to the higher carbon content of low-sulphur fuels brought in to comply with the global IMO 2020 regulation three years ago. Green Seas talks to International Council on Clean Transportation researcher Bryan Comer about why the regulation didn’t hike shipping’s carbon emissions.

While the International Maritime Organization debated carbon cuts last week, a lower-profile discussions saw environmentalist groups ask for a ban on devices aimed at tackling sulphur And they argued that the exception that allowed scrubbers to serve as a way to keep using heavy fuel oil after the 2020 global sulphur cap conflicts with another international convention: the UN Law of the Sea. We hear from Lucy Gilliam of Seas at Risk, Sam Davin of World Wildlife Fund Canada, Ida-Maja Hassellov of Chalmers University and Donald Gregory of the Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems Association.

If most countries at the International Maritime Organization are in favour of a zero-carbon target for shipping, why was the UN shipping regulator unable to agree to that this week? This week’s podcasts explores the positions of some of the 10 nations that are holding back.