2026: ammonia moves from testbed to the engineroom

Mr Hoare still recalls the initial response from Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) with a wry smile. “When I joined Fortescue and we went to the chief exec of the MPA Singapore, I said we’re hoping to burn ammonia in your port in about five months’ time. And he said, ‘hell will freeze over before you do that’.” The ice did not thaw through persuasion alone, but through process discipline, transparency and a willingness to be scrutinised.

“We all start as ammonia sceptics”

The result was Green Pioneer, a converted platform supply vessel that became shipping’s first serious attempt to answer whether ammonia works beyond controlled environments. It bunkered ammonia in Singapore, sailed under port state control in the UK, demonstrated operations in Rotterdam, Boston and the US East Coast, and did so repeatedly rather than ceremonially. For Mr Hoare, that distinction matters. “The real success of the project is not that we talked about ammonia,” he said. “It’s that we actually did it. It wasn’t a PowerPoint, we ran the systems, bunkered the fuel, operated the ship, and learned from it.”

Green Pioneer was never intended to be a commercial ship. Its value lay in learning, not earnings. What makes 2026 pivotal is that Fortescue is now moving beyond proof of concept. The company has chartered a 220,000-dwt Newcastlemax bulk carrier for delivery in 2026, designed to operate on ammonia on the Australia–China iron ore route. “Green Pioneer is a proof of concept, it doesn’t have a direct commercial value,” Mr Hoare said. “The next step is very different.” That step matters not only because of the vessel’s size, but because it shifts ammonia from demonstration to deployment, into one of the world’s most fuel-intensive trades.

The route itself is telling. Rather than waiting for global infrastructure, Fortescue is focusing on a corridor that can be served by a limited number of bunkering nodes. “You don’t need ammonia infrastructure everywhere,” Mr Hoare argued. “If you can clean up a major trade corridor — like the Australia–China iron ore route — with just a few bunkering nodes, you make a very big dent in global shipping emissions.”

If owners like Fortescue are the test pilots, enginemakers are the engineers that ensure the aircraft flies. On the OEM side, WinGD product manager, engines, Fabio Cococcetta is equally measured in his language. Ammonia, he said, is no longer a theoretical exercise. “At WinGD, we see ammonia as a credible and scalable zero or near-zero carbon fuel pathway for deep-sea shipping,” he explained, pointing to an orderbook of more than 30 X-DF-A engines across bulk carriers, gas carriers, tankers and container ships. “This momentum shows that ammonia is moving beyond theory and even beyond initial projects,” he said.

Ammonia’s toxicity

That momentum has been hard-won. Ammonia’s toxicity changes the engineering equation fundamentally, demanding double-wall piping, materials compatibility, specialised sealing and comprehensive leak detection. Mr Cococcetta emphasised that safety has not been treated as a box-ticking exercise. “Safety is central to everything we are doing with ammonia,” he said. “As first movers in ammonia-fuelled two-stroke propulsion, we are addressing a completely new fuel landscape where safety, control and system integration are paramount.” Development has followed a deliberately conservative, step-by-step path, with each challenge isolated and resolved before moving forward.

High-pressure injection

WinGD’s X-DF-A platform reflects that philosophy. It uses high-pressure ammonia injection, supported by a small pilot fuel fraction to stabilise combustion, with adaptations to the combustion chamber and fuel handling systems specifically for ammonia. The aim, Mr Cococcetta said, has been to deliver “the performance, responsiveness and efficiency expected of WinGD two-stroke engines, while meeting the additional requirements of ammonia operation.” As engines approach service, he believes makers are now in a position to offer owners a real choice rather than a promise: “With our first engines now approaching service, we are able to offer shipowners a real, commercially viable choice as they respond to evolving regulatory and market demands.”

The emphasis on “commercially viable” is important. Ammonia’s critics often focus on cost, particularly when compared with heavy fuel oil or marine diesel. Mr Hoare does not dispute the arithmetic. Ammonia’s lower energy density means more fuel is required for the same work. Yet the economics are not static. “Three years ago, green ammonia at around a US$1,000 per tonne simply didn’t work,” he said. “What’s changed is technology, prices have compressed dramatically, and we’re now seeing green ammonia in the six-hundreds.” That compression, driven largely by advances in electrolysis and production scale in China and India, has brought green ammonia closer to blue and grey variants than many expected, even without global carbon pricing.

For Fortescue, the choice of ammonia over alternatives such as methanol is also strategic. “Methanol still contains a carbon molecule, which means long-term verification and compliance risk,” Mr Hoare said. “Ammonia is not carbon-based, and for us that is the North Star.” Hydrogen remains the ultimate objective, but ammonia is viewed as the most practical carrier for long-haul shipping. “There’s more hydrogen in a cubic metre of ammonia than in a cubic metre of hydrogen,” Mr Hoare noted. “For the next 20 years, ammonia settles out very neatly as a stable way to use hydrogen.”

“Ammonia is moving beyond theory”

Yet technology and economics alone will not determine ammonia’s path. The human element looms large. Ammonia’s risks are well understood in industry terms, but they carry higher consequences. Routine tasks become more serious when the fluid involved is acutely toxic. Mr Hoare is blunt about where readiness must focus. “There was no ammonia training course when we started, so we had to develop one,” he said. Nearly 200 people, both at sea and ashore, have now been trained specifically around Green Pioneer’s systems. Traditional classroom instruction, he argued, is not enough. Training must be vessel-specific, immersive and continuous, aligned with the actual layout and control philosophy crews will face at sea.

Mr Cococcetta echoed that sentiment, stressing that engines do not exist in isolation. Design optimisation, he said, is being applied across vessel series to support consistent performance and operational reliability as ships enter service. That consistency is vital if ammonia is to move beyond one-off projects and into repeatable operation.

Ports and terminals form the other half of the equation. A well-trained ship can still be undone by an unprepared shore staff. The first ammonia bunkerings have been heavily choreographed, involving regulators, emergency services and terminal operators in unprecedented detail. That choreography is costly, but it is also how confidence is built. Singapore’s move to publish its first technical reference for ammonia bunkering in 2026 is significant precisely because it seeks to turn bespoke trials into shared procedures. Rotterdam, Boston and other ports are following similar paths, acknowledging that ammonia demands a different kind of readiness.

So, is 2026 truly the year of ammonia? “The question is no longer whether ammonia works,” Mr Hoare said. “We’ve shown that it does. The real question now is who is prepared to scale it, and who is still hoping the problem goes away.”