D6.4 Current and future bunkering infrastructure of green and blue ammonia

Based on our assessments, ammonia bunkering will first be introduced in special cases and wellsuited green corridors, before the market possibly matures at a significant size. One such case is ammonia carriers where clean ammonia is available and where less training on safety issues is required; seven such ships are on order. Another case is the ship delivering fertilizer from a green ammonia plant in Norway to fixed ports in Germany. Other ships on fixed routes are also possible.

Considering the likely supply of green ammonia in Australia and the limited number of parties involved, a promising green corridor is the transport of iron ore from three Pilbara ports in Australia to East Asia. A large amount of about 800 Mt iron ore is exported each year with at least 4 000 ship voyages. It should be possible to operate bulk ships on ammonia on this corridor and the calculated tank size is about 4 500 m3. Then the vast majority of these voyages would be fully on ammonia with bunkering only in Pilbara. Bunkering in the other end (China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan) will reduce the required tank size. In fact, bulk ships have a large fraction of the ammonia-fuelled ships that currently are on order, with up to 13 of the 25 ships to be ready within 2027. About 455 ships would be required for this green corridor, and if all these bulk ships would be used for iron ore on this trade, then about 3% of the iron ore transport from Australia would be green in 2027. A possible development of the ammonia-fuelled ships in place towards 2050 and their total ammonia fuel consumption are shown with S-curves in this work. Bunkering in Singapore is unlikely for this trade, but bunkering in the import ports in East Asia would make ammonia-fuelled bulk vessels more feasible.

Another possible green corridor is the container trade from East Asia to Europe. It is possible to use ammonia if bunkering of ammonia is available in China/South Korea, Singapore, Egypt and Rotterdam. Tank size should then be about 6 500 m3 to cover the vast majority of the voyages. It would be beneficial for the tank size to have bunkering by Sri Lanka and the tank size could be even more reduced with bunkering both in Oman and Gibraltar, cf. map in within the report. Operations to Japan does not increase the tank size as long as the ships can be bunkered in Japan.

The overall ammonia consumption will be significant for these two green corridors with close to 10 MTPA for the iron-ore corridor and more than 10 MTPA for the container trade. For these two trades, the announced clean ammonia projects in Australia could cover the ammonia demand in Australia, East Asia and Singapore. Further west on the container trade, ammonia fuel demand could be sufficiently covered from the announced projects in the Middle East and by Gibraltar.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.