Stena Bulk’s decarbonisation roadmap
April 2021

Earlier this month, we unveiled our decarbonisation plan to become a net zero emissions business by 2050. This goal is fully in line with our commitment to push sustainability boundaries for the future of clean shipping. We have set five ambitious, measurable and tangible milestones between 2020 and 2050 which form our roadmap to net zero. Today, I would like to share some further thoughts into these targets and what they mean for Stena Bulk.

We achieved the first of these milestones last year, when Stena Bulk began offering customers low-carbon shipping options with up to a 100% reduction of CO2 emissions. These options are based on the use of biofuels and our internal carbon emissions offsetting program, which allow us to offer low-carbon options on any voyage regardless of ports and specific ships used.

A key part of our journey to net zero will be the transition to a more sustainable fleet. We are already making progress on this area, and next year we will launch the first of three planned carbon neutral-ready, methanol-fuelled vessels in collaboration with our partners and friends at Proman. This methanol fuelled vessel will also be able to be operated on VLFSO and will come into service 18 years ahead of our ambition to become one of the first carbon neutral vessel operators in the world by 2040.

The Proman collaboration will directly support the achievement of our second milestone, which will require every new ship in our fleet from 2030 to come with a roadmap to be upgraded to carbon neutral status, either by retrofitting new technology or switching to carbon neutral fuels.

The third milestone in our decarbonisation’s journey comes hand in hand with the recently unveiled vessel design InfinityMAX concept, which is our take on zero emissions, self-sufficient and flexible seaborne transportation. Stena Bulk aims to have a ship with a similar design to the InfinityMAX concept operating on the water by 2035 at the latest. You can read the blog I wrote last month about the InfinityMAX here.

By 2040, we aim to achieve the fourth target in our decarbonisation plan by becoming a fully carbon neutral tanker operator. Some of our vessels will be zero emissions, some will run on carbon neutral fuels, and we will also put additional carbon emissions offsetting programs in place to fully achieve this goal.

We will finally arrive at our final milestone in 2050 by becoming a fully net zero emissions business. This means that we will not only take accountability for our operations and the indirect emissions connected to our business, but also for the cargo that we carry on our vessels.

By 2050, our fleet will only carry climate neutral cargo, which will become a shared responsibility between our customers and us. We have always said that only a partnership approach that enhances collaboration between industry partners and customers will help shipping to achieve full decarbonisation, and our 2050 target exemplifies this approach.

This decarbonisation roadmap is another example of our commitment to a sustainable shipping future, and we are immensely proud to be one of the first industry players to propose a plan that makes our own net zero journey tangible, achievable, and measurable.

And we are setting this strategy now to give ourselves targets to reach and innovate for. We know that not every solution will work and we will have to continue exploring a range of measures to meet these targets, but we also think that this is only entrepreneurial in the context of our radically changing market. A very challenging and demanding path lays ahead of us, but we remain prepared and eager to explore it.

 

Gothenburg, April 2021
Erik Hånell, President & CEO at Stena Bulk