Page 29: of Marine News Magazine (March 2025)

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r “First of all, we have already ? ve years ago de? ned our decarboniza- tion strategy and targets. We are aim- ing to reduce our direct emissions by 50% in 2030, compared to 2020 levels, so we’re halfway there and did actually achieve reductions of 24% in 2023. We are also aiming at becoming carbon-neutral in 2040. That’s quite an ambitious target that we’ve set for ourselves, especially considering that we have 450+ vessels, many of which will actually keep operating through- out until 2040 and beyond.”

How Svitzer approaches this chal- lenge is telling. “We have looked at dif- ferent future fuel solutions and also elec- tri? cation. We’ve deselected ammonia, because of toxicity. We have deselected hydrogen for now, because of space constraints. Methanol, we have looked closer into and, yes, we are building a battery hybrid dual-fuel methanol tug, as we speak,” explains Karlsen, adding, “It’ll actually not be ? tted with a fuel cell as ? rst announced because we, for now, deselect the fuel cell technology as we did not ? nd it mature enough for our desired application.”

Karlsen also points to the rapid de- velopment and evolution within the electri? cation area, but, with caveats. “It is becoming more and more evi- dent that that electri? cation is a part of the end solution; not everywhere, but it will be a solution that is appli- cable many places and most places in the longer term. We started with the ? rst battery hybrid tugs actually more than 10 years ago in Australia with small batteries. So, we have extensive experience with those. We just recent- ly bought another battery hybrid tug that will be delivered this summer and www.marinelink.com MN 29|