The electrification of the docks and the transition to liquefied natural gas (LNG) are the two big bets of the port of Barcelona for the coming years in order to contribute to the decontamination of the metropolitan area of the Catalan capital. The path in this regard is starting to be marked: over the course of last year, the port carried out a total of 199 LNG supply operations in ships totaling 143,000 m3. The figure doubles that of the last reference year, in which 65,000 m2 of LNG was reached.
The president of the Barcelona Port Authority, Lluís Salvadó, announced the data yesterday in a press conference in which he reiterated the will of the institution he presides over to bet on transitional fuel as the shortest-term solution to reduce the environmental impact of port activity and maritime transport.
Since 2017 there was a sustained growth in the supply of LNG to ships, but the increase in prices as a result of the war in Ukraine reduced the use of this fuel very substantially in 2022. It was just a parenthesis: the normalization of prices and the entry into service of a supply barge based in Barcelona, the Haugesund Knutsen, has led to a very noticeable increase in the number of operations, especially ship to ship, which have already multiplied by three for 2021. The increase has meant that the percentage of LNG supply in terms of total fuels (the most used are fuel oil and diesel) has gone from just 0.2% in 2021 to 5.8% in 2023.
In fact, Barcelona is already one of the first European ports in the LNG utilization ranking. The fact that the Haugesund Knutsen, with a capacity of 5,000 m3, from the Knutsen Scale Gas company and commercially managed by Shell, has been put into operation, has made it possible to greatly increase supply services to ships, especially Carnival group cruises. Last year, this barge carried out 66 supply operations to cruise ships, a number that multiplies the 18 operations in 2021 or the 14 in 2022. Baleària, on the other hand, supplies LNG to its ships using trucks tank, carried out 133 operations with 15,500 m3 of gas transferred. In addition, at the end of the year, the first LNG bunkering operation was carried out on a cargo ship, specifically, a vehicle carrier.
Of the 8,783 ship calls that arrived in Barcelona last year, a total of 618 were of ships powered by LNG, twice as many as in 2022. In this way, NOX has been reduced by 400 tonnes, a reduction of 10% of emissions.
The use of LNG, always as a transition fuel towards zero-emission fuels, is part of the energy transition plan of the port of Barcelona, which aims to decarbonize port activity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions halve in the 2030 horizon and be an emissions-neutral port by 2050. The plan includes the Nexigen project to connect ships to electricity when they are docked in the port, the generation of electrical energy with solar panels on port facilities to tend towards energy self-sufficiency and the promotion of new fuels. In this context, the port of Barcelona foresees the reservation of spaces intended for the future production of green fuels and renewable energies. In the short term, the construction of a green methanol production plant with priority use as a zero-emissions fuel for ships stands out. Meanwhile, the feasibility of building a waste biomethane production plant within the port facilities is being studied. Biomethane is the carbon-neutral fuel that will make it possible to precisely replace LNG in terms of ship propulsion.
