CMA CGM joins France’s Jupiter 1000 project to support its e-methane ready fleet

French container shipping firm CMA CGM intends to operate 44 e-methane ready vessels in two years.

PHOTO: CMA CGM's 15000 TEU containership Everglade at Jiangnan Shipyard. CMA CGM Group

The Jupiter 1000 project is developed by French gas operator GRTgaz and several other partners at Fos-sur-Mer in France. It is expected to generate 1 MWe of power for electrolysis, and methanation processes using carbon capture.

CMA CGM says Jupiter 1000 will ensure supplies to its current and future e-methane fleet.

The project will produce green hydrogen using renewable resources, in addition to e-methane using hydrogen. Carbon dioxide emissions will be captured during the production process.

GRTgas claims it has already developed electrolyser technology that can produce hydrogen and e-methane using water and renewable power. The second of two electrolysers came into operation in November last year.

E-methane will be produced with carbon dioxide that has been captured from a boiler at a nearby nearby steel plant operated by Asco Industrie. The captured carbon dioxide will be transferred to Jupiter 1000 site through pipelines, and later recycled with hydrogen in a methanation unit operated by Khimod.

Leroux & Lotz and Khimod will manage the carbon capturing and methanation processes. Both are partners in the Jupiter 1000 project.

The hydrogen methanation facilities are expected to be operational by next month.

CMA CGM currently operate 28 e-methane ready vessels and plans to deploy a total of 44 of them by 2024.

The shipping company is expanding its dual-fuel powered fleet that can run on LNG, bioLNG and e-methane, as a a step towards the firm's stated goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

"The Jupiter 1000 project is of great interest to the CMA CGM Group as part of our efforts to find very low-carbon new fuel sources", says CMA CGM Group’s executive vice president Christine Cabau Woehre.