September 25, 2021. The 2021 edition of Green Gas Mobility in Madrid, organized by Gasnam, the Iberian association that promotes the use of natural and renewable gas in mobility, has concluded with a unanimous message: mitigate emissions from heavy transport by land, sea and air represents one of the great challenges of this time. Faced with this ambitious objective, the representatives of the sector stated that today the only immediate option for decarbonization is liquefied natural gas (LNG) and they await the development of the biomethane market to continue advancing on the path towards zero emissions.
The commercial supply of hydrogen trucks will begin between 2024 and 2025, although today manufacturers such as Toyota already have a supply of light vehicles, buses and handling equipment powered by this fuel. However, the lack of a refueling network and the scarce availability of green hydrogen represent a brake on the development of this energy vector.
In the maritime and air sector, the International Energy Agency released revealing data on the low level of development of the technologies that allow mitigating emissions as a consequence of the power and autonomy requirements that limit the technically viable options for decarbonizing.
In maritime transport, improving energy efficiency will not be enough to meet the targets. LNG ship orders in 2021 have skyrocketed according to DNV data, but zero-emission solutions will not be mature enough for a real roll-out on high-tonnage ships this decade.
In the aviation sector, zero-emission solutions are at the demonstration or prototype level and therefore a great transformation and an intensification of the effort in research and development is required.
In this scenario, the maritime sector and road transport consider that natural gas and the progressive penetration of biomethane is the only alternative that allows immediate decarbonization, while the developments of other fuels and forms of propulsion that still require important efforts to become a real option advance.
To this end, the representatives of these segments demand a decided policy to promote the production and use of renewable gases, through a series of concrete actions: speed up the implementation of guarantees of origin, simplify the administrative processing of new gas plants. production, raising the ambition level of the biogas roadmap and facilitating the injection of this renewable gas into the grid; additionally, in the case of land and sea transportation, it is necessary to have the necessary incentives so that the use of this carbon-neutral fuel is accompanied by a viable business model; the deployment of hydrogen in land vehicles should take advantage of the momentum of Next Generation funds, providing the appropriate intensity of aid to guarantee the development of a minimum refueling network; and the unquestionable role of this energy vector in maritime, air and rail transport requires accelerating the development of the entire chain by reinforcing investment in R&D.
