Norwegian ship gets onboard carbon capture system

Norwegian ship gets onboard carbon capture system
by AFP Staff Writers
Oslo (AFP) Jan 17, 2025

A Norwegian shipping company has announced that it has modified one of its vessels to install the "world's first" onboard carbon capture and storage system to reduce emissions.

According to shipowner Solvang, the Clipper Eris should see its greenhouse gas emissions reduced by up to 70 percent.

During a retrofit at a Singapore shipyard, the vessel, a 160-metre-long ethylene carrier, was fitted with an exhaust filtering system that captures CO2.

The CO2 is then liquefied and stored in tanks on board to either be buried in rock or used for other industrial purposes.

"Onboard carbon capture combined with existing cleaning technology is a significant shortcut to decarbonisation of the world's deep-sea fleet," Solvang CEO Edvin Endresen said in a statement Thursday.

"This stands out as one of the more promising solutions for future vessels," he added.

International maritime transport is responsible for between two and three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but decarbonising it is a struggle due to technological hurdles and the international nature of the sector.

However, member states of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) have adopted a strategy aimed at reducing net greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by 20 to 30 percent by 2030, 70 to 80 percent by 2040 and to zero by 2050.

The Onboard Carbon Capture and Storage (OCCS) technology installed on the Clipper Eris is a pilot project.

Solvang has another seven ships currently under construction that have been designed to potentially be equipped with the system, the company said.

"The introduction of carbon capture and storage capabilities on board the Clipper Eris is a major leap forward for maritime sustainability," said Roger Holm, president of Finnish ship engine maker Wartsila -- a partner in the project.

2024 saw fastest-ever annual rise in CO2 levels: UK weather service
Paris (AFP) Jan 17, 2025 - The UK weather service said Friday that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 2024 grew at the fastest annual rate on record, exceeding their own projections by some margin.

The sharp rise in planet-warming CO2 was driven by fossil fuel burning, devastating wildfires and a weakening of Earth's natural carbon stores, the Met Office said.

Scientists said at such rates, the world cannot hope to hold global warming to the 1.5C limit that nations have agreed would avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Last year the atmospheric CO2 level at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, which has been taking such measurements for more than 60 years, spiked by 3.58 parts per million (ppm).

This blew past the Met Office's prediction of 2.84 ppm and even the uppermost range of its estimate at 3.38 ppm.

"Satellite measurements also showed a very large rise across the globe, due to the impact of record high emissions from fossil fuel burning being magnified by weaker natural carbon sinks -- such as tropical forests -- and exceptional wildfires," the meteorological agency said.

The Mauna Loa readings, known as the Keeling Curve, date back to 1958 and are the longest-running dataset of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

The increase in C02 and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases like methane in the atmosphere pushed average temperatures across the globe to unprecedented highs in 2024.

Last week Copernicus, the EU's climate monitor, said the two-year average temperature rise for 2023 and 2024 was above the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

This did not represent a permanent breach of this safer limit -- that is measured over decades, not individual years -- but it showed the world was getting dangerously close.

The Met Office, among other forecasters, has already projected 2025 to be a slightly cooler year -- but still among the three hottest since at least 1850 when modern record-keeping began.

Richard Betts, who led the Met Office forecast, said a shift to the weather phenomenon La Nina could allow natural sinks like forests to absorb more carbon than recent years, temporarily slowing the rise in C02.

"However, stopping global warming needs the build-up of greenhouse gases in the air to come to a complete halt and then start to reduce," he said.