This sentence confuses me. The shipping industry runs on natural gas? If so, why is there regret? My impression is that most systems using natural gas right now are in a good position.
What am I missing here?
The proportion of LNG fuelled cargo tankers out there right now is about 2% but for new orders, about 30% of them are LNG fuelled so that small percentage will grow rapidly.
However, for United States LNG in particular, the LNG production chain actually has very high emissions of methane. The industry has been fighting to keep that as unclear and unquantified as absolutely possible, and there's a good reason for that - when you take into account the methane emissions along the whole value chain from drilling through liquefaction, LNG's climate impact (in terms of global warming) is no better than coal. I'm sure it's beneficial compared to bunker fuel, but the climate benefit is much much slimmer than first believed.
I thought LNG was methane. What am I missing here?
That's not possible in practice: LNG leaks at almost every single step, and monitoring of it has been inconsistent and poorly implemented. Add in the significantly higher greenhouse effect of methane in the atmosphere, and you lose essentially all the potential benefits (not to mention the ultimate issue of continuing to add sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere - it's still a fossil fuel).
Better read the data now before it gets stricken from the record.
[0] https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/methane-supe...
If producers are intentionally venting off the methane, it isn't leaking, it's being released.
> A leak is a way (usually an opening) for fluid to escape a container or fluid-containing system, such as a tank or a ship's hull, through which the contents of the container can escape or outside matter can enter the container. Leaks are usually unintended and therefore undesired.
Were we supposed to guess New Mexico, Turkmenistan, and Iran, or am I missing something?
2nd 'graph of the linked article:
In the data EMIT has collected since being installed on the International Space Station in July, the science team has identified more than 50 “super-emitters” in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United States. Super-emitters are facilities, equipment, and other infrastructure, typically in the fossil-fuel, waste, or agriculture sectors, that emit methane at high rates.
<https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/methane-supe...>
Why are you sure of that?
Oils release an amount of CO2 that's midway between natural gas and coal. So unless bunker fuel is causing some other big release of greenhouse gasses, if natural gas is near coal then it's worse than bunker fuel.
On top of that, doesn't the sulfur pollution from bunker fuel have a cooling effect?
I'd assumed that a main engine's efficiency with bunker fuel was awful and with LNG was much better, meaning LNG had emissions as a shipping fuel.
But I think taking into account the methane emissions of upstream production (which varies incredibly wildly depending on the production environment) LNG from most of the world (particularly the USA) will be a worse shipping fuel on a global warming basis than bunker fuel.
Thanks for picking that up.
The cooling effect of sulphur dioxide emissions (which make sulphates in the atmosphere) is a whole Pandora's box that I'm unqualified to open but yes, there's a significant cooling effect from the SO2 emissions of bunker fuel and the 2020 rules change on VLSFO dramatically slashed the shipping industry's SO2 emissions (noting that SO2 emissions have also been falling across the board, and shipping is only one component of that). https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/sulfur-dioxide-emis...
If you read through industry journals, you can find some point in the late 80s where the industry journals were all reporting about how all ships would need to go back to burning coal soon. I'm pretty sure this was just a fantasy that shipbuilders paid the journals to push as it would mean the opportunity to sell lots of new ships.
I doubt the statement you quoted is grounded in any reality.
(I'd think that petrol itself would be a less desirable fuel for some of the same reasons as ammonia: it's heavier-than air, sinks, and burns rapidly or explodes when vapours combine with air.)
Climate change. Maybe you've heard of it?
(And it turns out things with LNG ships are much worse than previously believed. They not only emit CO2 - a bit less than traditional bunker fuel, but not much - they also emit methane, and in no small quantities. The LNG industry likes to pretend that these emissions are small and neglegible, but whenever someone goes out and actually measures them, they are substantial.)