Cost-effective choices of marine fuels under stringent carbon dioxide targets

Other conference contribution, 2013

In order to investigate cost-effective choices of future marine fuels in a carbon constrained world, the linear optimisation model of the global energy system, GET-RC 6.1, has been modified to GET-RC 6.2, including a more detailed representation of the shipping sector. In this study the GET-RC 6.2 model was used to assess what fuel/fuels and propulsion technology options for shipping are cost-effective to switch to when achieving global stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at 400 ppm. The aim is to investigate (i) when is it cost-effective to start to phase out the oil from the shipping sector and what determines the speed of the phase out, (ii) under what circumstances are LNG or methanol cost-effective replacers and (iii) the role of bioenergy as a marine fuel. In our base analysis we analyse results from assuming that CCS will be large-scale available in future as well as if it will not. In the sensitivity analysis different parameters have been varied in order to investigate which impact for example different supply of primary energy sources and different costs for different transportation technologies will have on the choice of fuels in the shipping sector. Three main conclusions are presented (i) it seems to be cost-effective to start to phase out the oil from the shipping sector nearest decades, (ii) natural gas based fuels, i.e. fossil methanol and LNG are the two most probable replacers, of which methanol has been shown to dominate in the case with CCS (methanol or LNG depends on the availability of natural gas, on the methane slip and on infrastructure costs) and (iii) limited supply and competition for bioenergy among other end use sectors makes the contribution of bioenergy small, in the shipping sector.