The Global Maritime Forum’s fourth edition of the Mapping of Zero-Emission Pilots and Demonstration Projects, launched at a Getting to Zero Coalition Workshop in Paris, has identified 373 zero-emission pilots and demonstration projects, an 84% increase over last year’s edition.
According to the report, new projects have emerged in Thailand, Egypt, Malaysia, and South Africa and more pilot schemes are taking a collaborative approach, with 70% of the identified projects involving partners from at least two countries.
Partnerships are growing between developing and developed countries as well and there is a global spread with some regions having higher industry activity than others. Most projects are based in Europe (56%), Asia (33%), and North America (9%), and the top three countries by the number of projects are Norway, Japan, and Denmark.
Findings see a continued increase in projects focusing on hydrogen-based fuels with ammonia and hydrogen in the lead. Ammonia is the dominant fuel focus for larger ship types; ammonia-powered ship designs received most of the approvals in principle in the last year.
For smaller ships, the leading technologies remain battery technology, hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen internal combustion engines, and methanol. More mature methanol technologies have begun to move beyond pilot work to a commercialisation phase.
“It is promising that the number of zero-emission pilot and demonstration projects is increasing each year and impactful projects are being developed in the global South,” says Johannah Christensen, CEO of the Global Maritime Forum. “Now we need industry’s actions to be backed by an ambitious revised greenhouse gas emissions strategy from the International Maritime Organization.”
