Assessment of the Fuel Cycle Impact of Liquefied Natural Gas As Used in International Shipping
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WHITE PAPER MAY 2013 ASSESSMENT OF THE FUEL CYCLE IMPACT OF LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS AS USED IN INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING Dana Lowell, MJ Bradley and Associates Haifeng Wang, Nic Lutsey, International Council on Clean Transportation www.theicct.org [email protected] BEIJING | BERLIN | BRUSSELS | SaN FRANCISCO | WASHINGTON ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The International Council on Clean Transportation receives generous funding from the ClimateWorks and Hewlett Foundations. The authors are grateful for the research contributions of Thomas Balon and Thomas Curry and for reviews by Fanta Kamakaté, Rachel Muncrief, and Nigel Clark. MARINE FUEL CYCLE TaBLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ ii List of Tables .............................................................................................................................. ii Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................4 Context ........................................................................................................................................................4 Report overview ..................................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2: Analysis of LNG Pathways ................................................................................... 11 Overview of pathways ...........................................................................................................................11 Emissions throughout the fuel supply chain ................................................................................13 Management of boil-off gas ..............................................................................................................14 Major data sources and assumptions .............................................................................................17 Chapter 3: Findings .................................................................................................................22 Emissions from existing practices ...................................................................................................22 Emissions from best practices ..........................................................................................................26 Chapter 4: Implications and recommendations .................................................................29 References ................................................................................................................................32 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................35 Data documentation for LNG fuel pathways ..............................................................................36 Sensitivity analysis................................................................................................................................ 44 i ICCT WHITE PAPER LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Average price of liquefied natural gas and petroleum-based fuel oil types in the United States, 2010–12 ....................................................................................................... 5 Figure 2: Required NOX, SOx, PM, and CO2 emission reductions to meet new shipping vessel engine and fuel requirements in the 2015–25 time frame ............................. 9 Figure 3: Analyzed LNG marine vessel bunkering pathways .....................................................12 Figure 4: Illustration of LNG marine vessel bunkering pathways .............................................12 Figure 5: Fuel cycle GHG emissions for eight LNG marine vessel bunkering pathways ........ 24 Figure 6: Fuel cycle GHG emissions for eight LNG marine vessel bunkering pathways, compared with conventional distillate and residual fuels. .....................................26 Figure 7: Fuel cycle GHG emissions for eight LNG marine vessel bunkering pathways, with adoption of best practices to reduce methane leakage ..............................27 Figure 8: Fuel cycle natural gas emissions and GHG intensity for eight LNG marine bunkering pathways, existing and best practices. .........................................................................28 Figure A1. GHG intensity of fuel pathways for base case, sensitivity cases, and best practices case ........................................................................................................................... 46 LIST OF TaBLES Table 1: Examples of maritime industry LNG technology installations .................................... 8 Table 2: Processes for each LNG marine vessel bunkering pathway.......................................15 Table 3: Summary of well-to-water GHG emissions from eight liquefied natural gas marine fuel bunkering pathways under existing practices ..................................23 Table 4: Summary of well-to-water GHG emissions from eight liquefied natural gas marine fuel bunkering pathways under best practices .........................................27 Table A1. Process data for Pathway 1 ..................................................................................................36 Table A2. Process data for Pathway 2 ................................................................................................37 Table A3. Process data for Pathway 3 ................................................................................................38 Table A4. Process data for Pathway 4 ...............................................................................................39 Table A5. Process data for Pathway 5 ............................................................................................... 40 Table A6. Process data for Pathway 6 .................................................................................................41 Table A7. Process data for Pathway 7 ................................................................................................42 Table A8. Process data for Pathway 8 ................................................................................................43 Table A9. Summary of GHG intensity findings with varying assumptions on engine efficiency, exhaust emission, upstream gas leakage, and liquefaction efficiency .....................45 ii MARINE FUEL CYCLE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Natural gas is receiving considerable attention as a plausible alternative to conventional transport fuels. Natural gas offers the inherent advantage of releasing less carbon per unit of energy than petroleum-based fuels. The fuel’s recent supply boom, resulting from the development of new extraction techniques in the United States and elsewhere, has decoupled its price from that of petroleum and spurred major investments in the infrastructure for its production, storage, and distribution. As natural gas becomes more desirable for transportation, technology providers have eased its adoption by devising new engines and retrofits for cars, trucks, and ships. Although natural gas is being used more widely for road transport, it shows particular promise for the marine transport sector. From 2015 onward, the maritime sector faces pressure from more stringent engine and fuel quality standards that will demand major emission reductions to improve air quality and mitigate climate change impacts. The use of liquefied natural gas (LNG) instead of conventional residual and distillate fuels will substantially reduce emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOX), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and par- ticulate matter (PM)—thus obviating the need to pay a price premium for new, low-sulfur marine fuels and to install after-treatment equipment to meet the upcoming standards. Nonetheless, considerable uncertainty remains about the net effects of LNG-fueled vessels on emissions. At issue are the upstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emission impacts of LNG, including the energy required to transport, handle, and process the fuel as well as the leakage of natural gas into the atmosphere. As a result, this report seeks to analyze to what extent the associated upstream carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions from producing LNG offset its potential climate benefit. The research in the following chapters presents a novel analysis of eight discrete pathways that are expected to play a role in the supply of LNG as a bunker fuel to the maritime sector. The analysis incorporates new data from a variety of sources and offers a rigorous and transparent accounting of where and how energy requirements, CO2 emissions, CH4 exhaust, and leakage emissions contribute to LNG’s overall impact. These “well-to-propeller” pathways are diverse, so as to cover the range of fuel cycle paths by which natural gas can be distributed and processed before powering marine vessels. The pathways include a range of imported LNG and domestically produced natural gas, dif- ferences in LNG liquefaction facilities, and varying LNG distribution and storage routes. Figure ES-1 illustrates findings from the analysis of the different LNG pathways. The pathway results are compared to various conventional distillate and residual fuels in terms of their GHG emission intensity measured in grams of CO2-equivalent per megajoule