Boats have carried liquefied carbon dioxide before, but not for the large-scale purpose of transporting industrial emissions to long-term storage facilities. A major Japanese ship-builder is getting ready for a new type of seaborne cargo: trapped CO₂. Capturing and storing carbon dioxide has an important role to play in meeting net-zero targets. But doing that can be difficult if the source of the greenhouse gas, such as an industrial plant, isn’t near a CO₂ storage facility. That’s where ships come in. For example, there are projects to transport and permanently store liquefied CO₂ under the North Sea. The International Energy Agency’s sees 1.6 gigatons of CO₂ captured annually by 2030. That rises to 7.6 gigatons in 2050, of which about 95% is to be held in permanent geological storage. Pipelines can also be used to transfer CO₂ from emitters to storage facilities. Yet it will be cheaper to transport the greenhouse gas by ship rather than pipeline when distances exceed 300 kilometers, according to Mitsubishi Shipbuilding. Click to read more in this article from Bloomberg.
