Norwegian shipping's green ambition

摘要

As a country with 2,650km of shoreline, coastal and shortsea shipping has always been essential to Norwegian transportation. It's understandable then why Norway has grown into a leader in developing innovative and, increasingly, environmentally sustainable marine technologies that not only cater to coastal and shortsea requirements, but also serve as a means for trialling concepts that could in the future be upscaled for deep-sea shipping. In the early part of this century, Norway pioneered the use of LNG as fuel for ferries (beginning with the Glutra in 2000), PSVs (Viking Energy in 2003) and offshore patrol vessels (Barentshav in 2009). More recently, it has done the same for battery propulsion. The first battery-powered car ferry, Ampere, debuted in 2015 and there are now nearly 450 fully-electric or hybrid vessels in service or currently on order, according to DNV GL's Alternative Fuels Insight platform.