“Scrubbers were installed on 399 ships in 2022, a fall of 24% y/y, and currently 13% of bulker, container, and tanker ships have a scrubber installed. Despite the slowing rate of installations, the share of ships with a scrubber is set to increase in coming years as 17% of ships in the shipyards’ order books are expected to have a scrubber installed,” claims Niels Rasmussen, Chief Shipping Analyst at BIMCO.
Since January 1, 2020, ships have actually needed to make use of ultra or reduced sulphur gas (eg ULSFO or VLSFO) to adhere to limitations for sulphur exhausts. However, ships can remain to make use of the cheaper hefty gas oil (HFO) if they set up a scrubber. But the rate costs for VLSFO has actually become much less than originally approximated.
On December 31, 2019, the day prior to the brand-new IMO policy was carried out, the rate costs for VLSFO in 6 of the globe’s biggest bunkering ports balanced $347/tonne. Since after that, the costs has actually balanced $149/tonne. It has actually been as reduced as $50/tonne for a prolonged duration throughout 2020 and also as high as $400/tonne throughout June/July 2022.
“The higher the VLSFO premium, the more attractive the investment in a scrubber is because the payback period is shorter. The lower-than-expected VLSFO premium has likely discouraged owners from installing scrubbers, particularly on smaller ships with lower bunker consumption and lower savings as a result,” claims Rasmussen.
In reality, the typical completely dry mass, container, as well as vessel ship with a scrubber has a deadweight capability of 140,845 tonnes whereas those without have approximately 51,743 dwt. Therefore, the 13% of the completely dry mass, container, as well as vessel ships with scrubbers stands for 29% of the deadweight capability. The unrefined vessel fleet has the highest possible setup price with 32% of the ships as well as 38% of the deadweight capability having actually scrubbers set up.
The portion of ships with scrubbers is readied to raise in the coming years as 17% of the completely dry mass, container, as well as vessel ships in the shipyards’ order publications are anticipated to have actually scrubbers set up. However, those 17% just total up to 24% of the deadweight capability in the order publication as well as the scrubber deadweight portion can as a result reduce.
“In the long term, the use of scrubbers to cut sulphur emissions may reduce as decarbonisation efforts will increase the use of alternative fuels that are sulphur compliant,” claims Rasmussen.
