A report from Lloyd's Register examines the role of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in reducing shipping emissions. LPG offers lower nitrogen and sulphur oxide emissions compared to heavy fuel oils and can reduce carbon emissions by roughly 20 percent. The study highlights the advantage of existing global LPG infrastructure and the potential for further decarbonization through onboard carbon capture systems and the future scale up of renewable LPG variants.
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LR is pushing LPG as a transition fuel. It has better infrastructure than ammonia or hydrogen right now, but a 20 percent carbon reduction is a small step toward net zero.
The real question is how this fits into fuel standards. If the industry relies on LPG, they will need strict accounting for the well to wake emissions to avoid just shifting the carbon load.
They mention onboard carbon capture as a way to boost these numbers. I want to see the energy penalty for running those systems on the ship. Does the extra power needed offset some of the fuel gains?
Exactly. Adding CCS to a vessel is a massive spatial and maintenance challenge. It is not as simple as plugging in a filter.
The report says 275 vessels are already using or ordering LPG dual fuel. That is a decent start for the gas carrier segment, but we need to see if this scales to bulk carriers or tankers.
