SIMIC

The six dual-fuel ships will give the carrier's US-based customers a path to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains, Rodolphe Saade, chairman and CEO of CMA CGM, said during the opening session of the JOC's virtual TPM21 conference.

"We will be pioneers in the deployment of LNG vessels from China to Los Angeles-Long Beach," Mr Saade told TPM21 attendees.

The 15,000 TEU ships will be rotated into CMA CGM's Pearl River Express line, operated under the Ocean Alliance vessel sharing agreement, between China and Los Angeles. The first vessel will be delivered in October 2021, and all the ships are expected to be operational by the end of 2022, CMA CGM said, reports IHS Media.

The Marseille-based carrier is the first major container line to have committed to LNG as a shipping fuel for long haul services, having ordered nine LNG-powered vessels of 23,000 TEU back in 2017.

CMA CGM said the first three of those mega-ships were delivered in late 2020. In December, the carrier announced it would boost its Asia-Europe capacity by 10 per cent in the first quarter, with the new capacity coming from the remaining six ships. By 2022, CMA CGM expects to have 32 LNG-powered vessels in service.

There is a growing interest in measuring ocean freight's impact on climate change and finding ways to reduce it. Increasingly, carriers and forwarders say, the shipper representatives showing up to meetings include sustainability executives, not just the traditional procurement or logistics teams.

In November, CMA CGM said that it would offer shippers a choice to have their freight carried on vessels fuelled by LNG or alternative fuels, as well as purchase carbon offsets, as a way to reduce their carbon emissions by up to 85 percent.

LNG has been criticised as a potential sustainable fuel given that vessels running on the alternative fuel only reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent compared with traditional bunkers. According to a 2020 report conducted by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) on behalf of environmental lobby group Stand.earth, the unintentional release of methane from LNG-fuelled engines could actually increase the effects of emissions from the shipping industry on climate change due to the amount of heat it would trap in the atmosphere.

"Maybe LNG is not the technology of the future, maybe there are technologies that are far better than LNG," Mr Saade said. "But today, what is important is not so much to criticise LNG, but to take action. LNG is the best technology available today."