TEXTE Environmental Impacts of Exhaust Gas Cleaning Systems for Reduction of SOx on Ships — Analysis of status quo 
Report compiled within the framework of the project ImpEx 
investment. At the beginning of the year 2020, that cost gap reached values above 300 USD per 
ton; in May 2020 it was only -60 USD per ton (Ship&Bunker, 2020)*. 
Along-term prognosis for the EGCS market after the first years of implementation of the Global 
Sulphur Cap is very uncertain, because there are many factors affecting the decision of the ship 
owners: fluctuating fuel prices, uncertainty in fuel demand and availability, modification of legal 
framework and development of new technologies (Schmolke et al., 2020). Here it is worth 
introducing other compliance options to Regulation 14 of the MARPOL Annex VI. Besides the use 
of heavy fuel oil in combination with EGCS, alternative compliance solutions can be divided into 
(DNV GL, 2019a): 
> Marine gas oil (MGO) or distillates, 
> New compliant low-sulphur fuels (LSFO), 
> Liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 
> 
Other alternative fuels, such as methanol, biofuels, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), battery 
propulsion and fuel cells powered by hydrogen. 
Other environmental IMO regulations (e.g. NOx regulation) also have an impact in the marine 
fuel market and the development of new technologies. For instance, LNG is gaining a more 
favourable position as an alternative for complying with SOx (DNV GL, 2019a) and NOx 
regulations (Ushakov et al., 2019). On the other hand, other alternative fuels will gain attention 
to reach the IMO greenhouse gases (GHG)-reduction targets if policy measures and incentives 
are introduced; otherwise, it is predicted that the current fuel mix will prevail but with LNG 
taking a greater share of it (DNV GL, 2019b). To this regard, DNV GL (2019b) explored three 
different IMO ambition pathways based on different assumptions on regulations for reducing 
GHG emissions and made a prognosis on the marine fuel market for the period 2018 - 2050. 
Figure 6 shows the results for the pathway with main focus on design requirements. It is 
noticeable a strong decrease on the share of HFO in combination with EGCS before 2020 and 
after that a relatively constant share with slight fluctuations. For the year 2050, the energy share 
of HFO and EGCS is projected to be 10%. The same study predicts the energy share of HFO and 
EGCS in newbuildings to be from around 30% in 2020 to moderately decrease to <20% by 2034. 
This implies that more orders of EGCS are to be expected during the next years. However, this 
conclusion should be considered with some caution as it is based on a prognosis with different 
assumptions (without taking into account other emerging fuels such as methanol) for the 
abovementioned factors that are unsettling the fuel market. 
4 „Global 20 Ports Average“ bunker prices on 15 May 2020 were 181.40 (IF0380), 243.00 (VLSFO) and 
297.00 (MGO) USD per ton, as retrieved from https: //shipandbunker.com/prices