What will be the main European port hub in the future? where ships travelling on the route between Asia and Europe Will they stop to replenish their supply of marine fuels? A lot it will probably be the Moroccan airport of Tanger Med. The supports the "Europe-Asia Green Corridors" report carried out by Transport & Environment (T&E), the organisation promoting the establishment of a European system zero-emission transport, which highlights the strategic location of the Morocco as an important bunkering hub, in particular in Europe's shift to green fuels for the Shipping.

The report points out that currently most of the container ships sailing between Asia and Europe are supplied with hubs such as Singapore and Rotterdam and notes that the bunkering operations first in Asia and then a second supply in Morocco, rather than in Western Europe, It could be a viable strategy for ships sailing 26% of trips could thus be made by this route. more if fed with green ammonia or 8% more if fueled with green methanol. This is in view of the two-thirds of maritime traffic between Asia and Europe passes through the Strait of Gibraltar and that by 2050 80% of the energy used by European ships will be based on the green e-fuels.

With regard to these green fuels, the report recalls whereas Morocco is Africa's third-largest nation by capacity solar power generation (734 MW) and the second of the continent in terms of wind energy production (1.4 GW), and this This is a great advantage given the quantities of renewable energy needed to produce green hydrogen. In addition, Morocco has an ambitious strategy on green hydrogen, aiming to produce 0.67 million tonnes per year by 2030, although - specifies the T&E report - the production potential of the projects currently announced would reach a quantity of only 0.05 million tonnes/year.

To facilitate the use of ships at the port of Tanger Med or other Moroccan airports to refuel - the Report - It could be a future shift in planning of refuelling as the current type of refuelling allows you to make a limited number of stops to embark fuel, while the new European rules that force ships to Increased reliance on the use of green e-fuels could lead to force container ships to make more stops. The explains that the simulations carried out by T&E and based on the on the current design of ships show that if the current Large capacity container ship (14,500-19,999 TEU) Fuelled with heavy fuel oil and fuel oil low-sulphur intermediate systems have an average autonomy of 36,500 nautical miles (67,500 km), the same ships powered by alternative fuels have a much shorter range and equal to an average of 6,500 nautical miles (12,000 km) if the propulsion is entrusted to hydrogen fuel cells or approximately 15,800 nautical miles (30,000 km) if the Propulsion is powered by methanol. The report states, However, that simulation offers only a partial scenario possible given that the autonomy of the ships currently in service It can vary greatly, with container ships from 14,500-19,999 HFO/VLSFO powered teus which, for example, may have a range of between 20,000 nautical miles (37,000 km) and 60,000 miles (111,000 km) and, basing the simulation on these ranges, ammonia-fuelled vessels of the same capacity They could have a range of around 7,000 to 20,000 Nautical miles.

The report is based on the survey of maritime traffic between the European Union and East Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) recorded in 2019, during which 465 ships container carriers have made 2,348 full trips on this consuming approximately 7.3 million tonnes of fuel, of which two million tonnes million tonnes, the report clarifies, will fall under the soon under EU rules for the decarbonisation of the shipping.

The report concludes that the refuelling of the vessels used by the on the East Asia-Europe maritime corridor with fuels hydrogen-based green technologies could help improve their autonomy that would otherwise be greatly limited by low Volumetric Energy Density of Marine Fuels Alternative. The document specifies that the analysis carried out It only provides some information about the potential strategy based on the on the replacement of bunkering carried out in Europe with refuelling carried out in Morocco, while for the Sailing in Asia there are many other strategies that companies navigation systems could adopt to cope with the limitations of related to the use of alternative green fuels. For example,- Specify the report - ships could choose to avoid bunkering in Europe or East Asia and to carry it out only in the MENA region and this could potentially be justified by the lower production costs of green fuels hydrogen base in this region and the difficulty (or additional costs) associated with the transport of alternative fuels to low density over long distances.