Three European auto majors will leverage low-emission shipment service for CO2 savings - UECC

Toyota Motor Europe, Ford of Europe and an unnamed “major” European vehicle manufacturer will purchase emissions reductions from Norwegian shipping company United European Car Carriers.

PHOTO: UECC AUTO ECO dual-fuel LNG vessel. UECC

United European Car Carriers (UECC) offers a low-emission shipment service that allows customers to purchase emission reductions equivalent to shipments made on its liquid biomethane (LBM)- and biofuel-powered vessels.

Its low-emission shipment service "allows for mass balancing of emission reductions within the UECC network," UECC’s energy & sustainability manager, Daniel Gent told ENGINE.

"This enables us to accelerate decarbonization by securing customer support for alternative fuels anywhere in our network. In simple terms, if a customer transports cargo in the Mediterranean, where alternative fuels may be limited, we can allocate emission reductions generated in Northern Europe to that transport work," Gent explained.

As per the agreement, UECC will bunker five of its LNG-fuelled vessels with LBM or bio-LNG, as well as use biofuel blends on some of its conventional-fuelled vessels. It expects to save up to 80,000 mtCO2e/year from the use of these fuels across Europe, Gent said.

It will then allocate these savings to the three auto companies, even if their actual shipments are made on fossil-fuelled vessels. The auto companies will use these purchased emission reductions to offset the emissions across their respective supply chains.

The bio-LNG will be supplied by Titan Clean Fuels at the Port of Zeebrugge using the mass balance method, Gent said.

Mass balancing, in this context, “entails injecting biomethane into a natural gas grid, where it is combined with natural gas using a mass balance system,” Caspar Gooren, renewable fuels director at Titan Clean Fuels told ENGINE in May. Titan said it offers B25, B50 and B100 – where B25 is 25% biomethane blended with 75% LNG and B100 is a 100% biomethane component delivered to the vessel.

“And you have the certificates [of origin]. When gas exits the grid, certificates provide evidence that green characteristics are attached to physical molecules from the grid. In fact, only a very small percentage of biomethane is physically present at the exit points because the biogas share of total gas in the grid is still small,” Gooren added.

“We are currently running on a B100 [blend] for bio-LNG. This is also the case for the majority of biofuels in use on our oil-fuelled vessels,” UECC’s Gent noted.

By Konica Bhatt

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