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Ammonia is tantalising as a shipping fuel because it has no carbon, but the first vessels planned for 2026 are just one step in a longer journey. We talk to Robert Tustin of Lloyd’s Register, Brian Ostergaard Sorensen of MAN Energy Solutions and Christos Chryssakis of DNV.

Biofuels are proving an easy way to cut the well-to-wake greenhouse gas footprint of existing ships, but demand for them is limited amid high costs. We speak to Cargill’s Olivier Josse, Eagle Bulk Shipping’s Jonathan Dowsett and Quadrise Fuels International’s Jason Miles to understand the role biofuels will play in shipping’s decarbonisation journey.

When a global sulphur cap was imposed on shipping in 2020, technology stepped in to allow companies to take the pollutant out of vessels’ ship exhaust. Will carbon capture play the same role as the industry grapples with greenhouse gas emissions? We hear from Sigurd Jenssen, director of exhaust gas cleaning systems at Wartsila, and Georgios Plevrakis, vice president of global sustainability at American Bureau of Shipping.

As shipping grapples with its greenhouse gas emissions, industry stakeholders often point to the higher carbon content of low-sulphur fuels brought in to comply with the global IMO 2020 regulation three years ago. Green Seas talks to International Council on Clean Transportation researcher Bryan Comer about why the regulation didn’t hike shipping’s carbon emissions.

While the International Maritime Organization debated carbon cuts last week, a lower-profile discussions saw environmentalist groups ask for a ban on devices aimed at tackling sulphur And they argued that the exception that allowed scrubbers to serve as a way to keep using heavy fuel oil after the 2020 global sulphur cap conflicts with another international convention: the UN Law of the Sea. We hear from Lucy Gilliam of Seas at Risk, Sam Davin of World Wildlife Fund Canada, Ida-Maja Hassellov of Chalmers University and Donald Gregory of the Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems Association.

If most countries at the International Maritime Organization are in favour of a zero-carbon target for shipping, why was the UN shipping regulator unable to agree to that this week? This week’s podcasts explores the positions of some of the 10 nations that are holding back.

In just a few weeks, the deliberations over how to tackle shipping’s carbon moved from the COP27 climate gathering in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to closed-door negotiations in Brussels. Green Seas traces the journey as it arrives at the International Maritime Organization for key talks on the future of global rules on shipping’s greenhouse gas footprint. We talk to David Cummins of the Blue Sky Maritime Coalition, Lars Robert Pedersen of Bimco and Lucy Gilliam of Seas at Risk.

Harvey Gulf International Marine has tried a variety of strategies to tackle its carbon emissions. But for one vessel, the final piece of the net-zero puzzle was bio-LNG produced from swine waste. Will bio-LNG play a role in solving shipping’s greenhouse gas riddle? We talk to Harvey Gulf’s Dain Detellier, International Council on Clean Transportation’s Liudmila Osipova and Blue Sky Maritime Coalition’s David Cummins.

The podcast takes a virtual visit to the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, where environmental groups are seeking to highlight how climate change is enticing more ships to the sensitive region, which is contributing to more climate change because of black carbon emissions. We hear from University College London climate scientist Robbie Mallett, the Clean Arctic Alliance’s Sian Prior and Liudmila Osipova of the International Council on Clean Transportation.

We explore how the world’s largest cruise company has joined a growing list of big-name shipowners adopting air lubrication, which uses a ‘magic carpet’ of microbubbles to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

In our first episode, Green Seas newsletter visits the Golden State, virtually at least, to find out whether the new gold rush can be found out at sea.