UECC and Titan team up on bio-LNG bunkering operations in Port of Zeebrugge

United European Car Carriers (UECC), provider of sustainable short sea RoRo transportation in Europe, and physical supplier Titan Clean Fuels (Titan) on Thursday (4 July) announced they are collaborating on a series of major liquefied biomethane (LBM) bunkering operations in the Port of Zeebrugge. 

Titan will bunker ISCC-EU certified mass balanced LBM, also known as bio-LNG, to all of UECC’s LNG dual fuel car carriers this month.

 These pure car and truck carriers (PCTCs) will use 100% LBM as part of UECC’s ‘Green Gas Month’, an initiative that supports its wider ‘Sail for Change’ sustainability programme. Three of the ships also feature battery hybrid technology, further enhancing their environmental performance.

Due to the biomethane waste feedstock, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction potential from this clean fuel use is significant. In ‘Green Gas Month’ alone, UECC calculates the Well-to-Wake emissions reductions will exceed 8,000 metric tonnes of CO2e.

 The GHG emissions reductions generated from these major LBM bunkering operations will be available to UECC customers through a CO2 registry that it opened in January 2024. This registry allows UECC to transfer the environmental benefits of clean fuel use to charterers in a transparent, traceable and independently verified manner across its entire supply chain.

Daniel Gent, Energy & Sustainability Manager at UECC, said: “Through the use of biomethane, ‘Green Gas Month’, and ‘Sail for Change’ more broadly, we are providing our customers with a great springboard to further their own decarbonisation strategies. With progressive automakers focusing on cleaner cars, we expect them to want to reduce their scope three emissions and ship those cars sustainably – which is what we can deliver in collaboration with Titan right now.

“Tightening environmental regulations and emissions levies like the EU Emissions Trading System are also increasingly boosting the commercial rationale for using clean shipping services. The use of LBM as a marine fuel reduces UECC’s, and our customer’s exposure to the costs of emitting within the EU ETS, which will continue to ramp up quickly over the coming years,” continued Gent.

Flip Dankelman, Trader at Titan, said: “We are pleased to be working with UECC on these major LBM bunkerings and hope these are the first of many more clean fuel operations with them. The mass balanced LBM via Fluxys’ LNG Terminal in Zeebrugge is a practical, realistic and cost-competitive way to use clean marine fuels today. And the UECC team has valued the flexibility that our fleet of strategically located LNG bunker vessels can offer.”

Both firms said the clean fuel supply agreement and milestone on the LNG pathway is timely as activation of the European Union’s FuelEU Maritime regulation is imminent.

“The regulation, which will especially incentivise the use of renewable fuels of non-biological origin such as e-methane, will come into force on January 1, 2025. It will be applicable to vessels over 5000 GT, 100% of emissions will be considered within the EU and 50% of them if one port in the voyage is outside the EU,” they concluded.

Photo credit: United European Car Carriers
Published: 5 July, 2024