Thank you Volkswagen

 As part of its efforts to establish green credentials Volkswagen AG has added new generation autocarriers to its fleet of chartered vessels. The first two of the series have already visited Halifax, the Emden and the Wolfsburg, named, respectively, for the locations of VW's primary export facility and its major manufacturing centre.

Today's (April 16) return visit was from the Emden, a 69,470 gt, 19,243 dwt Pure Car and Truck Carrier (PCTC) delivered late last year by Guangzhou Shipyard International. The 7,000 CEU capacity vessel is powered by a MAN ME-GI dual fuel main engine. (MAN, formerly Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg is a VW company).

On sailing this evening for Davisville, RI, the ship exhibited a "Powered by LNG" slogan along with owner SFL Corporation's logo. (Publicly traded SFL is a creature of shipping magnate John Frederiksen along with Frontline Tankers, Golden Ocean, MOWI and other shipping and petroleum related interests.) 

The banner did not state that it is dual fuel - burning LNG only some of the time, and regular fuel oil the rest of the time.

Once the ship had rounded Ives Knoll outbound, it exhibited its true colours. Perhaps the alternative fuel to LNG is really coal?

Clearly the ship has a faulty exhaust gas scrubber system if it is emitting that amount of particulate. Exhasut gas scrubbers are supposed to clean the ship's exhaust by removing SO2, NO2 and particles, thus allowing the ship to use higher sulfur fuel, which is otherwise banned from use by international treaty. (Scrubbers aren't necessarily the answer either as some systems flush pollutants into the sea.) 

Volkswagen's reputation is not helped by this kind of display either. It is interesting to note however that Volkswagen's name does not appear anywhere on the ship.

The use of LNG - which is still a fossil fuel, no matter what the hype - can only be considered as a stop gap until cleaner and less polluting fuels such as hydrogen become viable. So bragging about the use of LNG seems a bit perverse, especially when it isn't used all the time.

.