COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry, the shipbuilding unit of the world's largest integrated fleet owner Cosco Shipping, which has ordered 24,000-TEU methanol dual fuel newbuilds from the group's yards, is pushing ahead with developing more green vessel designs using methanol and ammonia as a fuel.

"Currently, the shipping industry is experiencing tremendous change, and these are bringing huge challenges to the owners, as the traditional emission reduction ways such as low-speed sailing cannot effectively solve vessel emission issues. We must use clean fuel and low carbon technology to promote the industry's development," said Liang Yanfeng, chairman of Cosco Shipping Heavy Industry, at Marintec 2023 in Shanghai.

Based on IMO 2050 emission target fossil and liquid clean fuels will be used for ocean going vessel propulsion for the coming decades. Shipping will have a multi-fuel future, where fuel oil remains in use for around another 30 years, reports UK's Seatrade Maritime News.

The demand for methanol-fuelled vessels, especially for large size containerships is a starting point for the shipping industry to achieve decarbonisation and transformation, meanwhile, the use of ammonia as a ship fuel is also becoming popular, Mr Liang said.

Green ammonia production could be scaled up to 2030 and become as cost effective compared to other synthetic fuels. Considering the feed stock and production process, green ammonia would be cheaper than green methanol.

As the largest integrated shipping company, Cosco Shipping has made a clear demonstration to shipping industry on decarbonisation and ordered the world's biggest methanol dual-fuel 24,000-TEU ships at a total cost of CNY20 billion (US$2.8 billion) to be built by NACKS and DACKS.

"We are going to build more large size methanol containerships as well as large size ore carriers," Mr Liang said, "and we are actively developing ammonia-fuel vessel types.