Engines to advance the transition to clean fuels

UAE

Alexandre Eykerman, managing director of Wärtsilä in the UAE, talks to The Energy Year about the cost advantages of incorporating balancing engines into renewable energy installations and developing technology to help the maritime industry run on lower-carbon fuels. Wärtsilä is a global provider of technology and lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy industries.

What are Wärtsilä’s capabilities and footprint in the UAE?
Wärtsilä is a 190-year-old global technology company operating in two major sectors: marine and energy. In marine, we are committed to enhancing the decarbonisation of the maritime community by developing industry-leading technologies to advance the transition to future fuels.
Ammonia has emerged as a promising alternative fuel as the shipping industry looks for more sustainable fuel options. In November of 2023, Wärtsilä introduced the marine sector’s first commercially available four-stroke engine-based solution for ammonia fuel which can immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70% compared to a similar-sized diesel solution.
In energy, we help our customers and the power sector accelerate their decarbonisation journeys through our market-leading technologies and power system expertise. Our solutions include flexible engine power plants, energy storage and optimisation technology and services for the whole lifecycle of our installations.
Our engines are ready for a net-zero future. Utilising gas as a transition fuel today, they will be capable of running on whichever sustainable fuels are most abundant in the future, and won’t become stranded assets in the decades to come. Wärtsilä’s engines already run on 100% synthetic and carbon-neutral methane and can use hydrogen/natural gas blends containing up to 25% hydrogen by volume. In June 2024, we launched our hydrogen power plant to enable the net-zero power systems of tomorrow.
A variety of sustainable fuels – green hydrogen, hydrogen derivatives such as ammonia, methanol and biofuels – will be needed to decarbonise not only the energy industry but also shipping, transport and industry. It is still uncertain which fuels will become the most promising candidates for decarbonising the energy industry. It is therefore important to be ready for all of them, including both hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuels.
We have a strong presence in Dubai, from where we serve our customers in the UAE, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain. We are also present in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. In the Middle East, we have an installed power plant base of around 8 GW, with roughly 2.3 GW in Pakistan, 2.1 GW in Saudi Arabia and the rest distributed across the region.
In the UAE, our biggest plant is in Ras Al Khaimah where we have supplied a 58-MW power plant with six Wärtsilä engines. We have also delivered power plants of over 200 MW elsewhere in the Middle East.

How is Wärtsilä positioning itself within the global transition to renewable energy?
At Wärtsilä, we emphasise innovation in sustainable technology and services to help our customers continuously improve environmental and economic performance, both in marine and energy. In 2016, Wärtsilä announced its 100% renewable energy future vision. We believe that the world’s transition to 100% renewable energy is feasible, and our technologies can enable and accelerate that transition.
A lot of renewable energy is being installed in Europe and the US, but the intermittency of renewables has required utilising other technologies as well. As the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, renewables need to be supported with balancing power to keep the grid reliable and stable.
Energy storage can do part of the job, but only in the short term, and that is where engines come into the picture, to provide the needed longer-term balancing power to support intermittent renewables. The UAE and the Middle East are well positioned for solar power as they benefit from abundant sunlight.

Can you walk us through your approach to adapting diesel engines to operate as balancers?
The beauty of diesel engines is that they are very easy to adapt. This means that they can run on natural gas, which has a lower carbon footprint than diesel, and they can even run on ammonia, methanol or hydrogen.
Our hydrogen-ready engine which is based on the Wärtsilä 31 engine platform is expected to be available for orders in 2025, and available for delivery from 2026. This means that our customers who have balancers currently running on gas will be able to switch to hydrogen when the fuel is available. Today, almost all Wärtsilä engines that have been in operation for 25-40 years have probably seen two or three modifications to adapt to different fuels. This cannot be done with turbines or many other technologies.

What benefits can engines bring to large renewable energy installations?
Renewables are already the cheapest form of new power generation, and wind and solar are the dominant forces in shaping clean energy markets around the world. But adding renewables alone, without adding flexibility, is a dead-end path to net zero. For renewable energy to thrive, flexibility must sit at the heart of our future energy systems.
Variable renewables need to be supported by flexible capacity to secure reliability and avoid grid instability and blackouts, as well as renewables curtailment and higher system costs. This flexibility will need to come from various sources, including battery energy storage, flexible thermal capacity such as grid balancing engines and demand-side responses.
Today, if you decide to develop a 100-MW, 24/7 energy block with just renewables, you will need to install around 400 MW of solar. However, you will also need to install 18 GWh of energy storage that has to be charged, so you will need to double the solar generation to around 900 MW. This will drive costs extremely high.
On the other hand, if you satisfy 2% of the block’s energy demand with gas, your costs will be lowered by 15-20%. And if you were to increase that share of energy demand to 10%, then the cost would go dramatically further down.
In general, governments don’t fully understand this unique advantage that engines can bring, which is why we provide some consulting work for free and generate models to demonstrate the benefits.

What decarbonisation solutions can you offer to the maritime industry?
The decarbonisation of shipping will require not only fuel efficiency measures but also the adoption of future fuels such as ammonia and methanol. At Wärtsilä, we are committed to helping the maritime community become part of the decarbonisation solution by futureproofing for regulation, risk and rising costs, and by unlocking the business benefits of decarbonisation.
From developing industry-leading technologies to advancing the transition to future fuels and building an end-to-end digital ecosystem where all vessels and ports are connected, we are dedicated to pioneering solutions that propel the maritime industry towards a more sustainable and prosperous future.
As we understand that every decarbonisation journey is unique, we offer a broad portfolio of engine technologies designed to support our customers on their chosen journey. In the past year, we launched the industry’s first four-stroke ammonia engine, expanded our methanol engine portfolio and released a new version of one of our dual-fuel engines, which are capable of cutting methane emissions by a further 41% compared to the previous version.
We also worked alongside a Brazilian customer, Raizen, on a research programme to test ethanol as a fuel option for vessels. This is only the beginning. We are continually developing and testing engine technologies and solutions that can support the industry in reducing greenhouse gas emissions even further in the future.
In the UAE today, most ships run on distillate marine fuel oil due to its wide availability and easy storage. Container vessels are normally designed for specific maritime routes, and if bunkers are not available or fuel prices increase, the ship can run into serious issues.
Technology has made it possible to use gas and alternative, more sustainable fuels such as ammonia. However, ammonia’s toxicity means specialised storage and handling equipment needs to be developed, and crews need to be appropriately trained to ensure that those handling the fuel understand how to mitigate any risks effectively.
Hydrogen will face similar challenges. In the maritime industry, we expect hydrogen to become a fuel for balancing or for small vessels that only run for a few hours, but not a base fuel. Nevertheless, we expect the consumption of alternative fuels to rise and to become one of the elements that will drive growth in our portfolio.

What is your outlook for broader decarbonisation efforts taking place in the world today?
Wärtsilä has been decarbonising industries for more than 50 years. We implemented gas in marine engines before anybody believed in it, and we consider ourselves pioneers in the implementation of alternative fuels. The more we listen to our customers, the more we understand the challenges they face and the better we can develop our technology and our approach.
Most trade today is transported by sea, and as decarbonisation becomes a priority, we will adopt more alternative fuels. However, shipping’s efforts to decarbonise have been stuck in a chicken-and-egg dilemma – fuel producers are reluctant to scale production without predictable demand, and uncertainty about which fuel will scale faster has made ship operators reluctant to commit to a single fuel.
In the long term, policy will be a major driver of change. To transition to future fuels, consistent and decisive policies are needed to send a clear demand signal to the industry. In the energy industry, we believe that the market for balancing technology will expand. In future energy systems based on intermittent wind and solar power, the ability to rapidly and dynamically respond to variations in renewable output is critical.
According to Wärtsilä’s analysis, after the mass deployment of hydrogen-ready thermal power plants starts in the mid-2030s, plants are expected to operate at a relatively low capacity, with capacity factors under 10%. The operational profile of flexible engine power plants will involve low running hours, high ramp rates and numerous daily stops and starts.
Traditional inflexible baseload generation methods such as combined-cycle gas turbines may struggle under this new paradigm. In contrast, flexible thermal capacity from grid-balancing engine power plants, for example, will be well-suited to meet the future needs of the energy system.

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