The ShippingPoint_Cargo vessels burn some of the dirtiest fuel there is
and belch huge amounts of carbon. But their industry
is poised for a dramatic shift.MOVE
STEFAN EEFTING IS, AS HE PUTS IT,
“a long-lasting guy” in the shipping indus-
try. He started as an apprentice engineer in
a German shipyard in 1984, and now he’s a
senior vice president at MAN Energy Solu-
tions, a firm whose engines power every sec-
ond vessel on the deep seas. Over the course
of Eefting’s career, he’s watched ship engines
grow from massive steel contraptions to
epically huge ones: The 100,000-horse-
power monsters in today’s cargo ships are
five or six times the size of a house. And for
decades, the vast majority of them have
ingested heavy fuel oil—the leftover dregs
of petroleum distillation, a product so vis-
cous it’s practically a solid at room tempera-
ture. “Like chewing gum,” Eefting says. “You
have to heat it to 140 or 150 degrees Celsius
to even load it into the engine.”
Heavy fuel oil burns thick and dirty,
throwing off oxides of nitrogen and sulfur
and producing more carbon emissions than
almost any other fossil fuel. But it’s cheaper
than anything else on the market. When fuel
is your industry’s greatest cost—and when
your industry guzzles 300 million metric
tons of it a year—heavy oil is practically the
only choice on the menu.
That calculation changed, however, on
January 1, when a new international regu-
lation mandating low-sulfur fuel kicked in.
Ship owners must now either install devices
to scrub sulfur out of their heavy fuel oil
BY Samanth Subramanian ILLUSTRATION BY^ Eiko Ojala exhaust or buy cleaner, more expensive