Norway - September 10, 2024

Norway - Recent

Storyline:
Chinese-Norwegian cooperation builds world's largest, most environmentally friendly car-carrier

[Voice_over]

Bigger, better and cleaner - This car-carrier is set to revolutionise the heavily polluting freight sector by introducing ammonia fuel which emits no Co2.

Built in China, the 12 new flagship vessels will soon transport cars around the world... under the Norwegian flag.

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Andreas Enger, CEO, Hoegh Autoliners:

"It is the largest and most environmentally friendly car-carrier ever built. And it is in a way defining a new era of vessels. When we ordered this vessel, there was nothing like it in the order book. Afterwards, almost all new orders have lots of similarities."

[Stand_up]

Johannes Pleschberger, Reporter:

"These Chinese-built car-carriers are, for now, running on liquified gas, but they're set to switch to ammonia fuel by 2027. Shipbuilders are constructing this new vessel type around two huge fuel tanks in order to carry a sufficient amount of ammonia for long distances."

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Special safety mechanisms are needed to ensure no leakage during storage as ammonia can be highly toxic. When burned as a fuel - however - the combination of hydrogen and nitrogen, which are the component parts of Ammonia, is completely emission-free.

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Lise Winther, SVP, Yara Clean Ammonia:

"The whole value chain from producing the fuel and then using it, you will have no Co2 emissions."

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But ammonia comes at a price. A car transported with zero-emission fuels between continents costs 100 Dollars more than with fossil fuels.

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Andreas Enger, CEO, Hoegh Autoliners:

"For this really to take off, we are actually dependent on having regulations and structures like carbon taxes and incentives that equalises the cost between the low-carbon fuels and regular fuels. Without those types of regulations, I think we will continue to use traditional fossil fuels for a long long time."

[Voice_over]

For now, the 1.3 billion dollar project, mainly financed by Chinese investors, is setting new standards in Norwegian-Chinese cooperation.

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Andreas Kravik, Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister:

"It will be impossible to reach the climate goals without China playing a very important part in that transition. So we have a very strong interest in collaborating with China."

[Voice_over]

Several other companies from the Scandinavian kingdom have started to build their ships in China. An exchange of know-how and construction abilities which is changing our world.

[Restrictions : No access Chinese mainland]