COSCO will retrofit four container ships with MAN ES methanol engines
Chinese container shipping company COSCO Shipping Lines (COSCO) will retrofit four of its container ships with MAN Energy Solutions’ (MAN ES) dual-fuel methanol engines.
PHOTO: Fleet of COSCO-owned container ships. COSCO Shipping Lines
COSCO Heavy Industry Shanghai Shipyard will retrofit four of COSCO's vessels with dual-fuel methanol engines starting in the second quarter of 2025, according to German engine manufacturer MAN ES.
This will enable the vessels to run on conventional fossil marine fuels and methanol at the same time, a first for COSCO's fleet. Each conversion can enable the vessel to reduce up to 50,000-70,000 mt/year of CO2 emissions, when operating on green methanol, MAN ES claims.
The first batch of retrofitting will be carried out on COSCO's 13,800 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) and 20,000 TEU class vessels. Moreover, COSCO has the option to retrofit nine more of its 20,000-TEU vessels with dual-fuel methanol engines.
“We are in the early days of a huge wave of dual-fuel retrofits and see many concrete projects coming online with the capacity to meet shipping’s demand for green fuels, such as e-methanol and bioLNG,” said Michael Petersen, head of MAN ES’ PrimeServ Service Center in Denmark.
“We expect that owners who have opted to wait and watch over the past few years will ultimately also convert their tonnage to dual-fuel,” Peterson added.
MAN ES anticipates a rise in demand for dual-fuel methanol retrofits as Chinese shipping companies strive to reach China's 2030 carbon emission cap and net-zero target by 2060. The company's Chinese service centre is preparing to handle "large retrofit projects at multiple yards simultaneously" to meet this demand, said Sarath Prasannan, head of APAC at MAN ES.
In addition, the German engine maker received a contract in July for the methanol retrofitting of at least 15 container ships operated by Hapag-Lloyd and Seaspan. It also confirmed an order to retrofit 11 A.P. Moller-Maersk-owned container vessels with dual-fuel methanol engines.
By Konica Bhatt
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