Sustainable shipping fuels: HAMR Energy

Why Melbourne?

Being from Victoria and having spent most of our careers in the traditional energy sector, it was a natural progression to use our skills to make low carbon fuels. Victoria has fantastic opportunities and an amazing skills base to contribute to developing low carbon fuels solutions.

Challenge

Container ships carry more than 80% of traded goods around the world, but at a very high price. Most are powered by heavy fuel oil, which contributes more than two per cent of all global emissions. Understandably, decision makers and the shipping industry want this reduced, and are adopting policy and striving to make major emissions reductions by transitioning to greener fuels like biodiesel and renewable methanol is underway, but one of the biggest brakes on progress is finding ways to make alternate fuels available at the ports where ships need to refuel. Without this, companies will keep using the same fossil fuels they currently do. Finding ways to produce and store (bunker) green fuel near ports is vital to resolving this dilemma.

Solution

Methanol is currently used to produce building products like engineered timbers, medical products, paints, pharmaceutical and many other everyday items. This demand makes it the second most traded chemical commodity in the world, after ammonia.

Renewable methanol can be made from sustainable sources like biomass (waste timber) and used as a clean-burning, low-carbon fuel. Like fossil fuels, renewable methanol is a liquid at room temperature and relatively safe. And unlike other renewable fuel options such as hydrogen or ammonia, the industries and associated facilities are already in place to roll it out. All this makes renewable methanol an attractive option for decarbonising shipping and potentially as a feedstock to make fuel for other high emitting, ‘hard to abate’ sectors like aviation.

HAMR Energy is at the forefront of a push to develop renewable methanol in Victoria. The company’s flagship project, the Portland Renewable Fuels Project, aims to create renewable methanol – potentially 300,000 tonnes a year – from a synthetic gas made from residual forestry biomass hydrogen. 

The intention is that the renewable methanol will then supply ships visiting Victoria. The project will also contribute to a proposed bunkering and storage hub at the Port of Melbourne that involves a partnership between the port, shipping companies, other fuel producers and supply chains.

Result

HAMR Energy is at the forefront of a push to develop renewable methanol in Victoria. The company’s flagship project, the Portland Renewable Fuels Project, aims to create renewable methanol – potentially 300,000 tonnes a year – from a synthetic gas made from residual forestry biomass and renewable hydrogen. 

The intention is that the renewable methanol will then supply ships visiting Victoria. The project will also contribute to a proposed bunkering and storage hub at the Port of Melbourne that involves a partnership between the port, shipping companies, other fuel producers and supply chain specialists.