Dear Editor,

We welcome Lloyd’s List’s coverage of Project Captured and the discussion it has generated around onboard carbon capture. Open debate is essential as shipping works through the practical realities of decarbonisation in a hard-to-abate sector.

Project Captured was a first-of-a-kind pilot. Its purpose was not to demonstrate a fully optimised solution, but to generate real-world, end-to-end data on what happens when CO2 is captured on board a vessel and managed downstream.  

When assessed on a full value-chain basis, including downstream effects from how captured CO2 is ultimately used and what those products displace, the results showed an overall emissions reduction of 7.9% (at a 10.7% capture rate), corresponding to 0.84 tonnes of CO2 avoided per tonne of CO2 captured and offloaded.

This is a modest outcome, but one which reflects both the early stage of deployment and a conscious decision to expose operational and system-level inefficiencies.

It is important to make a distinction between inefficiencies that occur in a first deployment and permanent limitations. Several of the emissions penalties identified — such as tank sizing mismatches, long-distance trucking, venting during handling and the absence of waste heat recovery — are not fundamental constraints. They are exactly the kind of issues that pilots are meant to reveal, so they can be addressed through better engineering, logistics and integration.

Equally important, pilots in shipping test more than technology alone. They test how ships interface with ports, infrastructure, safety regimes, logistics networks and accounting frameworks. Treating pilot results as if they represent the fully optimised technology misses the purpose.

Some critics assume that today’s regulatory and accounting frameworks, jurisdictions and incentive structures will remain unchanged. In practice, maritime regulation and accounting methodologies have evolved repeatedly in response to evidence from early deployments.

Project Captured does not predict regulatory outcomes; it provides data to inform ongoing discussions about how emissions should be measured and accounted for across complex value chains.

While some have their preferred solutions or conclusions, GCMD does not take such positions. We don’t seek to extend the life of unviable solutions, nor do we wish to dismiss pathways where parameters may change positively in future.

Our work is deliberately technology-neutral and evidence-driven, and we focus on generating empirical data so that different pathways can be assessed against real-world constraints.

Project Captured adds measured data to a complex debate. Interpreting that data in the right context is essential if shipping is to make credible progress toward decarbonisation.

Yours sincerely,

Lynn Loo
Chief executive, Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation