Amazon and IKEA are among the major firms that are pushing the ocean shipping industry to use zero-carbon fuel sources for vessels by 2040.
The marine shipping industry accounts for almost 1 billion tons of carbon emissions every year, as per the report by Clean Air Task Force (CATF).
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2018 set an initial target of cutting carbon emissions from the marine shipping industry by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008.
According to CATF research, for the IMO to achieve its targets a huge part of the international shipping fleet needs to be shifted to net-zero-carbon fuels. CATF said that ammonia can be an option for marine, though it highlighted that ammonia is 3-7 times costlier than conventional marine fuel.
“In order to combat the climate crisis, we must rapidly decarbonize marine shipping,” Jonathon Lewis, Director of Transportation Decarbonization at CATF said in a statement announcing the consortium of merchants.
CATF stated in its research that the U.S shipping fleet is responsible for 80 million tonnes of carbon emissions. To meet the deadline of IMO 2050, U.S. shipping needs to use marine ammonia as high as 47 million tonnes.
CATF noted that there is still a far way to go to “make marine ammonia a reality.”
