Danish shipping company AP Moller-Maersk is working towards carbon neutrality by 2050, Clean Shipping International reported on 10 February.
In its 2020 annual report, the company said that customers were demanding responsible transportation of their goods so they could limit their own carbon footprint.
“Our ambition to have a carbon neutral fleet by 2050 was a moonshot when we announced it in 2018. Today we see it as a challenging, yet achievable target to reach,” AP Moller-Maersk CEO Søren Skou said.
In June 2020, the AP Møller Foundation had established the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping to develop new fuel types and technologies, Clean Shipping International said.
The company’s carbon-neutral solution for ocean transport, Maersk ECO Delivery, is based on sustainable biofuel from waste sources such as used cooking oil.
According to the report, this system provided direct carbon savings, not carbon offsets, by ensuring that for any Maersk ECO Delivery container transport, enough sustainable biofuel would be purchased and used in the AP Moller-Maersk network to neutralise the carbon emissions that would have occurred using standard fuel. These CO₂ savings were allocated to the customer and verified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials.
In 2020, customer uptake of Maersk ECO Delivery had exceeded expectations, the report said, with 10 major customers choosing to participate, and this number was expected to increase.
“While this is very promising,” the report, “it represents a small share of the total amount of containers transported by AP Moller-Maersk, and we need much more customer demand to scale net-zero emissions offerings and enable a transition to full decarbonisation.”
AP Moller-Maersk is an integrated container logistics company and operates in 130 countries.
