A fossil free future

Sustainable boating

Boats 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 Fossil Free Marine has part of the solution in our product portfolio and our future roadmap.

Many existing pleasure boats and commercial vessels with diesel engines are already compatible with fully renewable and climate neutral alternatives, such as HVO100 fossil free diesel (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 reduced CO2 emissions from pleasure boats by over 40%! A single marine station from Fossil Free Marine in a prime location can contribute with as much as 5.000 tons reduction of CO2e per year.

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 fossil free alternatives to gasoline will emerge on a commercial level as well, and we are well positioned to initate pilot projects and early commercialization for boats, both pleasure and commercial.

The challenge is the lack of distribution of fossil free, sustainable alternatives for the marine sector. Existing marine fuel stations are old, have low flexibility and are to a large extent incompatible with modern biofuels, and are thus only offering fossil alternatives, or fuels with a very low share of renewables.

Today, the first fully electric, battery powered, boats for both pleasure and commercial use are entering the market. But like was the case for electric cars a number of years ago, there are very few places to charge them. To make things worse, the marine environment is demanding and many places where electric boats would need to charge have insufficiently developed electric power grids.

That’s where Fossil Free Marine comes in. We make boating sustainable.