NYK to Buy Carbon Credits From Direct Air Capture Plant

 

Japanese shipowner NYK has reached a deal with Eneos to buy conventional bunker fuel with attached carbon credits, or offsets. This will reduce NYK's net emissions in years to come. 

Under the agreement, Eneos will purchase carbon credits from 1PointFive, an initiative of Occidental Petroleum and BlackRock. Each credit represents an equivalent amount of carbon that 1PointFive removes from the atmosphere using direct air capture (DAC) technology and stores underground. Eneos will then sell the bunker fuel and the attached carbon credits to NYK.  

1PointFive is building its first direct air capture plant in Ector County, Texas. It is designed to recover up to 500,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year, and the company says that future plant designs will be able to capture twice as much. The captured gas will be pumped into stable, secure underground geologic formations for long-term storage. Prominent clients include Airbus, Shopify and airline ANA, and the startup expects lots of demand in the decades to come. 

The company's first DAC plant will begin operating in 2025, and the Eneos fuel delivery contract begins in 2028. 

The carbon credits from Eneos are part of NYK's plan to address the last hard-to-abate elements of its carbon footprint. It will focus first on maximum energy efficiency, then on transitioning to new green fuels like ammonia and methanol (and LNG). For the remaining emissions that cannot be eliminated, NYK will buy carbon offsets to achieve net-zero. 

It is the two companies' second major agreement this year. In July, NYK absorbed about 80 percent of Eneos' in-house shipping fleet, including 18 LPG carriers, 19 chemical and product tankers, 12 dry bulk carriers and a ship management company in Singapore. Eneos retained its crude oil tankers.