News / Green critics hit out at carrier appetite for LNG fuel

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Following Maersk’s green partnership with CMA CGM, announced just one week after Maersk’s methanol “new industrial revolution”, environmental coalition Ship It Zero has expressed concern over the French liner giant’s preoccupation with LNG.

Maersk told The Loadstar yesterday that its partnership was not to be understood as a policy u-turn, step backward, or endorsement of fossil LNG: “There is no change of direction for Maersk. LNG is not a fuel of the future for our fleet.”

Neither Maersk nor CMA CGM were willing to comment as to whether Maersk green funding could indirectly end up supporting fossil LNG via its new research partner.

Although Ship It Zero Lead, Pacific Environment, Eric Leveridge was “encouraged” by the partnership in general, the group is “still concerned about the use of fossil-fuelled LNG ships and the climate destruction that they bring.

“The shipping industry must listen to the dire warnings from the IPCC and transition to real solutions now to peak the sector’s climate emissions before 2025 – not continue to support false solutions like LNG,” Mr Leveridge said.

Scientific evidence shows that burning LNG for ship fuel is not uniquely damaging compared with heavy fuel oil or marine diesel, but as a method for decarbonisation its impact negligible as it simply replaced one fossil fuel with another.

Upstream, LNG infrastructure is responsible for leaking methane into the atmosphere, which becomes more likely as more is built to allow ships to bunker the fuel. Some 50 new LNG bunkering facilities are planned at ports by 2025. According to campaign group Say No To LNG, methane emissions have increased by 150% in six years as ships and other industries switch to the fuel.

In a recent interview, Opportunity Green CEO Aoife O’Leary said it was highly unlikely that CMA CGM, MSC, and Hapag-Lloyd had been “tricked” into trying to decarbonise using yet another fossil fuel.

“Very intelligent people work in shipping,” she said. “To the extent that any have actually been conned into using LNG — I have concerns about how they got their jobs.”