Carbon-neutral LNG is increasingly gaining momentum as more industry players commit to the concept, or put themselves on a path towards it.
This week, Tokyo Gas announced that it had joined 14 other Japanese companies in forming the Carbon Neutral LNG Buyers Alliance in an effort to promote the more widespread use of the greener version of the fuel. For Tokyo Gas, the move is another step forward on the road to carbon-neutral LNG, which it first imported in 2019, subsequently becoming the first company in Japan to supply it to customers as carbon-neutral city gas. And the alliance also brings in a number of downstream industries that consume gas, which is expected to help expand the reach of carbon-neutral LNG.
This comes after Mitsui & Co. announced last month that it had agreed to supply carbon-neutral LNG to Hokkaido Gas.
The news about the Japanese consortium comes in the same week that Russia’s Gazprom reported that it had delivered the first carbon-neutral LNG cargo to reach Europe, in collaboration with Royal Dutch Shell. The super-major took delivery of the cargo, which was sourced from Novatek’s Yamal LNG project in Russia, at the Dragon LNG terminal in Wales.
Shell has been involved in the shipping of a handful of carbon-neutral LNG cargoes to date, including the one received by Tokyo Gas in 2019 – one of the first two such cargoes in the world at that time.
These developments have come at around the same time as commodity trader Vitol announced it was launching a green LNG product that will allow customers to offset the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with their cargoes. Whilst there are challenges around carbon-neutral LNG, especially related to cost, these various moves show that its use is rapidly becoming increasingly widespread.

 

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