Challenges and Opportunities for the Integration, Production, Transportation, and Utilisation of Clean Fuels for Maritime Applications

Environmental regulations have always been an essential component of the natural gas supply chain, especially with recent and greater emphasis on shipping operations. Recently more stringent regulations have been imposed by the International Maritime Organization on global maritime shipping operations. This study explores the challenges and opportunities associated with substituting heavy fuel oils used for maritime transportation with relatively cleaner fuels. The first stage of the study involves a review that explores: (a) the feasibility and environmental dimensions of different bunker fuels, including liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, and ammonia, where the operational viability and optimal conditions for these fuels are examined; (b) a macro-level view of the entire supply chain, with an emphasis on how liquefied natural gas exporters can establish synergies across the supply chain to also deliver the end-product required by customers instead of delivering only liquefied natural gas; (c) measures that can support ship operators to comply with environmental regulations. The study analyses from an economic and environmental perspective the notion that the demand for alternative fuels will continue to increase as the transportation sector moves towards integrating cleaner fuels to comply with increasing environmental regulations. The study tests the validity of such a hypothesis by utilizing linear programming to develop a mathematical model where several scenarios are assessed, and the optimal combination of fuel sold to customers and fuel used for bunkering. Attained results demonstrate that cleaner fuels can indeed be used to limit emissions. For instance, while solving the modelled problem for minimal emissions, the solution suggests that a total of 40.4495 million Tons of LNG, 1.988 million Tons of H₂, 5.3592 million Tons of NH₃ is to be delivered where the ships delivering these fuels should be fuelled with 1278.26 Tons of NH₃, 112.92 Tons of H₂, and no ships are to be fuelled by LNG nor HFO. As for the hypothesis regarding the financial attractiveness of clean fuels, this can only be determined accurately if the model is further developed to an extent where it becomes capable of incorporating accurate demand and price forecasts and generate the optimal solution across multiple timestamps.