EU faces calls to exclude LNG, biofuel from clean shipping scheme

A group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) led by Transport & Environment have urged the European Commission (EC) to "explicitly exclude" LNG and biofuels from a clean marine fuel initiative, calling for more investment in green electricity-based fuels instead.

The FuelEU initiative aims to encourage more sustainable fuel use in shipping by removing market barriers and reducing uncertainty about which technical options are market ready. But in a letter addressed to commissioners, the NGOs said FuelEU and ReFuelEU, which supports sustainable aviation fuel, "could inadvertently cause the uptake of alternative fuels that are worse than fossil fuels, notably crop-based biodiesel and natural gas (LNG).

"In order to avoid the promotion of unsustainable fuels in these sectors, the signatories call on the European Commission to explicitly exclude biofuels and fossil natural gas from the scope of the FuelEU Maritime initiative and crop-based biofuels from the ReFuelEU Aviation," the letter stated. "We instead call on the EU to focus on green electro-fuels produced from additional renewable electricity and whenever CO2 is required, direct air capture (DAC)."

Proponents tout LNG as a ready and available option for shippers to comply with increasing regulation of shipping emissions. The EC estimates that shipping traffic to or from ports in the European Economic Area causes 11% of all EU CO₂ emissions from transport and 3-4% of its total CO₂ emissions. The EU executive recently approved including shipping in its emissions trading system, covering not only vessels making internal journeys within the bloc but also making international voyages to and from EU ports.

The call for the EC to drop its support for the fuel comes after the World Bank concluded in a report published in late April that LNG could only play a limited role in decarbonising shipping, while ammonia and hydrogen were the most promising zero-carbon fuels on the market. But the report was criticised by LNG bunkering association SEA-LNG and others for having a prescriptive approach. While switching to LNG helps curb emissions now, alternatives like hydrogen and ammonia are yet to be proven as commercially feasible, the association argued.