In what could be a pivotal moment for the future of sustainable shipping, the world's first-of-its-kind ammonia-powered ship arrived at London's Canary Wharf in March 2025.
According to Sustainable Times, the Fortescue Green Pioneer set out from Singapore in January and completed a journey of thousands of nautical miles after calling at Southampton for inspections.
After being given the all-clear by authorities, the ship's company hopes that the tour will demonstrate the viability of ammonia for use in low-carbon shipping fuel.
Fortescue's executive chairman and founder, Andrew Forrest, told Sustainable Times: "This will not only deliver a better future for the planet but accelerate a reduction in shipping costs through the widespread adoption and scaling of renewable energy."
The UN Trade and Development noted that shipping accounts for roughly 3% of harmful planet-warming gas pollution worldwide.
The massive cargo ships that carry out the bulk of global trade need vast amounts of fuel. Heavy fuel oil (HFO) is the most common type, which powers about 60% of the world's large ocean-going vessels, per Forbes.
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HFO is incredibly toxic, and its density makes it much harder to clean up after a spill. Despite the controversy, it is still widely used because it is the cheapest form of heavy-duty fuel that is widely available.
Greener alternatives have been hard to come by until now. For example, hydrogen alone is extremely difficult to store and transfer over long distances.
However, ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, can be liquified, stored, and transported much more easily, as the U.S. National Science Foundation observed.
Ammonia is just one of several areas of promising research into alternative fuel sources. While the journey is promising, there are still some key hurdles to be overcome for it to be viable at scale.
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Sign me up 👍 Research from MIT, published in the Environmental Research Letters journal, found that ammonia as a fuel poses key health risks that will require careful management in the future.
"We find that the public health impacts of switching from fossil fuel to ammonia depends largely on the technology and policy choices," the study detailed.
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