Commodities Titan Cargill Plans to Deploy Green Ships by 2030

(KQ Education Group/Bloomberg) Commodities trading giant Cargill Inc. expects some of its freight vessels to be powered by clean marine fuel before the end of this decade.

In 2020, Cargill shipped nearly 200 million tons of iron ore, grains and other goods around the world. It has as many as 700 vessels on the water at a time, and most of them are leased. All those carriers are currently powered by oil – as is the majority of the world’s merchant shipping fleet, which spews more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Germany and the Netherlands combined.

“I’m very confident that we will have some zero-carbon fuel ships by 2030,” Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill’s Ocean Transportation business, said in an interview. “The big challenge is how fast are we going to be able to scale.”

The number of zero-carbon ships Cargill will control and the type of fuel they will use hasn’t been determined yet. The Minneapolis-based company is involved in trials of alternative options, including biofuels, ammonia and methane. READ MORE