Boats and ships today account for a disproportionate part of all emissions, especially when compared to the rapid reduction in emissions from road traffic. Since 1990, the share of CO2-emissions from boats has doubled, and emissions of hydrocarbon from pleasure boats are now 30% of those from road traffic! In essence, we are moving further away from sustainable boating, rather than the opposite.

But this does not have to be the case. We believe we can make boating sustainable, and that Secfuel has part of the solution in our product portfolio and future roadmap.

A recent study by Ricardo PLC (www.ricardo.com), on behalf of ICOMIA (The International Council of Marine Industry Associations, www.icomia.org) highlights the obvious benefits of so called “drop-in fuels” in decarbonizing the leisure marine industry.

A synopsis of the report is available here: https://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/11/ICOMIA_Summary_Report_Pathways-to-Propulsion-Decarbonisation-for-the-Recreational-Marine-Industry.pdf

The report strongly supports the main underlying logic behind our brand “Fossil Free Marine”, an initiative launched already in 2022, to help enable decarbonization of the global maritime industry. Our unique marine fuel stations can contribute to providing access to renewable drop-in fuels, such as HVO (XTL), which is already today widely available to automotive applications but not yet broadly distributed to boaters due to limitations in storage capacity and obsolete legacy fueling infrastructure.

Many existing pleasure boats and commercial vessels with diesel engines are already compatible with fully renewable and climate neutral alternatives, such as HVO100 renewable diesel (XTL, e.g Neste MY), and can be operated in a sustainable manner. In Sweden, for instance, switching to HVO100 in all diesel-powered boats could reduce CO2 emissions from pleasure boats by over 40%! A single marine station from Secfuel, a Fossil Free Marine brand, in a prime location can contribute with as much as 5.000 tons reduction of CO2e per year – in warmer climates with longer boating seasons significantly more!

Outboards can be run on alcylate (e.g. Aspen), a significantly cleaner alternative than conventional gasoline, which can reduce hydrocarbon emissions by as much as 99%! In the near future, we firmly believe more sustainable alternatives to gasoline (e.g BioGasoline, e-fuels and similar) will emerge on a commercial level, and we are well positioned to initiate pilot projects and early commercialization for boats, both pleasure and commercial.

The challenge is the lack of distribution of fossil free, renewable and sustainable “drop-in” alternatives for the marine sector. Existing marine fuel stations are old, do not comply with today’s environmental and safety standards, have low flexibility in terms of offering multiple fuel varieties and are to a large extent technically incompatible with modern renewable fuels and biofuels, and thus only offer fossil alternatives, or fuels with a very low share of renewables.

Secfuel remains committed to driving development towards sustainable boating by enabling distribution of more sustainable drop-in fuels, the fastest way to decarbonize boating.