Upcoming visit from ‘green methanol’ vessel highlights San Pedro ports’ pollution reduction efforts
The public will be able to tour one of Maersk’s new cargo ships, which will be at the Port of Los Angeles in late August.
If you want to see the future of ocean shipping – or one possible future, depending on which way the fuel industry goes – it will arrive at the Port of Los Angeles and be open to the public in late August.
One of the world’s first “green methanol” ships will visit the port to be christened and named at an Aug. 27 ceremony, and on Aug. 28 public tours will be offered, port officials said Tuesday.
The 350-meter Maersk cargo vessel, which runs on low-emission methanol and can carry more than 16,000 20-foot containers, will stop at APM Terminals on the south end of Terminal Island. (The Port of Los Angeles will share details in August on how to get a free ticket to tour the ship.)
The green ship announcement came in a progress report on how the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution from ships, trucks, and equipment and facilities in and around San Pedro Bay.
In recent years both ports have been encouraging the switch to zero-emissions equipment and vehicles with grant funding, supporting infrastructure, and potential fines or other enforcement.
The LA and Long Beach ports are kicking in $25 million to a project that will install more than 200 electric freight truck charging stations at eight sites in the region, including the Port of Long Beach and Wilmington, said Lisa Wunder, the LA port’s acting director of environmental management.
But they’re also betting hydrogen will be important in the transition to cleaner air, as shown by a just-signed agreement with the federal Department of Energy to make California a “hydrogen hub” by funding facilities to produce and distribute the fuel at sites around the state, as well as trucks and cargo handling equipment that run on hydrogen fuel cells.
The San Pedro ports belong to a public-private partnership that will receive $1.2 billion in federal dollars for the $12.6 billion statewide endeavor; the LA and Long Beach ports have applied for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for cargo equipment and fueling facilities in the terminals, said Heather Tomley, the Long Beach port’s managing director of environmental affairs.
But the change to zero- and lower-emission vehicles, equipment and vessels at the ports has sometimes been slow and challenging. Just a fraction of more than 23,000 drayage trucks registered in the twin ports’ database – less than 2% – produce zero emissions, according to Amber Coluso, an environmental specialist at the LA port.
The ports offer grant money on top of state vouchers to help businesses and independent drivers buy cleaner trucks, but they’re still expensive to buy and insure when compared to those powered by fossil fuels. So the ports are looking to beef up fueling infrastructure and potentially offer other incentives such as payments when drivers of zero-emission trucks visit the ports, Coluso said.
Part of the reason for the slow transition is that the future remains murky. Different types of cleaner fuels including methanol, hydrogen and ammonia are expected to become more widely used as ports and the shipping industry try to reduce pollution, but the exact mix – how much of each type will be needed – is “a little bit of a moving target,” Tomley said.
As the ports and their users work toward a goal of “net zero” emissions by 2050, “there’s a lot of activity underway in the shipping industry to identify what fuel solutions, what technology solutions will help” keep everyone on track, she said.
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