Newcastle’s Port of Tyne will host a scalable fuelling station for hydrogen and electric vessels to initially serve small craft
The novel design concept, which is planned to be operational by March 2025, will use liquid hydrogen as the basis for providing three fuelling options for powering small craft: liquid hydrogen, compressed gaseous hydrogen, and electric charging.
Work on the fuelling station is being supported by UK Department for Transport Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition funding, with project participants including Unitrove, ACUA Ocean, Zero Emissions Maritime Technology (ZEMTech) and the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.
Project participants said the so-called Zero-Emission Maritime Fuel Station (ZEMFS) can be expanded to meet the needs of larger vessels.
Zero Emissions Maritime Technology chief executive Madadh MacLaine said, “The foundation of this project is the delivery of true zero-emissions clean fuels to the maritime industry. This pilot is for vessels under 24 m, but ZEMFS is fully scalable to any size vessel, and adaptable to any type of port infrastructure. ZEMTech anticipates the ZEMFS concept will form a foundational building block in maritime shipping’s true zero-emissions future, placing UK companies solidly at the forefront of the energy transition in maritime shipping.”
“The maritime industry is responsible for a significant proportion of pollutants associated with climate change and reduced air quality, and a zero-emissions multi-fuel station that can power boats running on either hydrogen or electricity is expected to play a significant part in reducing these emissions,” Unitrove chief executive Steven Lua said.
The project is part of the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 2 (CMDC2) launched in May 2022, funded by the Department for Transport (DfT), and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK. As part of the CMDC2, the DfT allocated over £14.0M (US$15.8M) to 31 projects supported by 121 organisations from across the UK to deliver feasibility studies and collaborative research and development projects in clean maritime solutions.
CMDC2 is part of the UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions’ (UK SHORE) flagship multi-year programme. In March 2022, the DfT announced the biggest government investment ever in the UK commercial maritime sector, allocating £206M to UK SHORE, a new division within the DfT, focused on decarbonising the maritime sector.
UK SHORE is delivering a suite of interventions throughout 2022-2025 aimed at accelerating the design, manufacture and operation of UK-made clean maritime technologies and unlocking an industry-led transition to Net Zero.
International energy company Equinor has chosen Port of Tyne as the operations and maintenance base for its Dogger Bank offshore windfarm project – currently the world’s largest – and Port of Tyne commercial director Ian Finch said the ZEMFS project will be "extremely valuable to operators like Equinor who are looking to minimise emissions from their service operation vessel fleet.”
The Maritime Hybrid, Electric & Hydrogen Fuel Cells Conference, Bergen will be held 25 October 2022. Details and tickets can be found here
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