Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is the most promising type of fuel, IAA PortNews journalist quotes Makhail Petrov, senior expert of the classification department at Russian Maritime Register of Shipping, as saying at the 5th International Ecology Forum held in Saint-Petersburg.
According to him, LNG is the most environment friendly fuel and it is relatively cheap. However, adequate infrastructure is to be developed in order to use it at the seaborne transport.
The expert says other alternatives are not as promising. For example, scrubbers have huge dimensions and weight (500 tonnes) while light oil products are expensive and they do not solve the problem with NOx emissions which can be further limited in the future.
Under Annex VI of MARPOL Convention, new IMO requirements for ships operating in the SECA area (including the Baltic Sea and the North Sea), involving a sulphur content of max. 0.1 per cent in fuel, compared to the present 1.0 per cent, come into effect from 2015.
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