Maersk has announced its collaboration with the Danish renewable energy company European Energy and its subsidiary REintegrate to create green fuel for its first vessel that will operate on carbon-neutral methanol.
REintegrate and European Energy will establish a new Danish facility in Southern Jutland to produce approximately 10,000 tonnes of carbon-neutral fuel which Maersk’s first vessel operating on green e-methanol will consume annually.
For the production of the methanol, which is expected to start in 2023, the facility will use renewable energy and biogenic CO2, while the energy needed for the green fuel production will be provided by a solar farm in Kassø of Southern Denmark.
REintegrate has a proven track record for producing green e-methanol in its test laboratory in Aalborg. The new facility will be its third of this kind, as the construction of the second one will launch in 2022 in Skive.
“This agreement with European Energy/REintegrate brings us on track to deliver on our ambition to have the world’s first container vessel operated on carbon-neutral methanol on the water by 2023,” said Maersk’s CEO of Fleet and Strategic Brands, Henriette Hallberg Thygesen.
Additionally, the CEO of European Energy, Knud Erik Andersen commented that this agreement marks a milestone in the journey towards green transition in the shipping industry.
He went on to add, “While renewable energy is becoming more and more common in the energy mix of electricity consumption, this is one of the first steps in heavy transportation towards using 100% renewable energy.”
The Danish shipping company announced the dual-fuel vessel in February 2021 and in June Maersk published that Hyundai Mipo Dockyards will build the world’s first methanol feeder.
The 2,100TEU vessel will sail in the network of a Maersk subsidiary, Sealand Europe, on the Baltic shipping route between Northern Europe and the Bay of Bothnia, flying the Danish flag.
