Winter in Unalaska by Sam Zmolek
Your voice in the Aleutians.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The KUCB Newsroom provides newscasts Monday through Thursday at noon and 5 PM on KUCB Radio. You can find many of our local news stories here.

The Aleutian Islands could become a hub for zero-emissions shipping

Hope McKenney
/
KUCB
The International Port of Dutch Harbor presents the perfect fuel stop for hydrogen-powered container ships making the trip from Shanghai to Long Beach.

It started with a question: is it possible for the large container ships traveling from China to the United states to make the trip using renewable fuel sources?

The international shipping industry largely runs on petroleum. The sector emits about a billion tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses annually, according to a study published by the United Nations.

So a group of researchers at an independent nonprofit, the International Council on Clean Transportation, are looking into what it would take to transition petroleum-run ships into using zero-emission fuels.

What they found could put the Aleutian Islands right at the center of it all.

ICCT researcher Elise Georgeff has been investigating hydrogen as a potential replacement fuel. First, her team calculated how many ships could cross the Pacific Ocean using the existing hydrogen technology.

“About 43% [of existing ships] could be powered by using hydrogen fuel cells,” Georgeff said.

Fuel cells are similar to batteries, but instead of holding a charge from another source, they create a charge from fuel they store.

Georgeff found that almost half of the ships traveling from China to California could make the same trip with hydrogen fuel cells. As for the other half, the ICCT team determined that those ships would need to make a pit stop along the way to refuel.

“About 99% of the ships that couldn't make the Pacific route before, if they just added one refueling stop — think a little gas stop on the way — they could attain the route,” Georgeff said.

This would essentially create a zero-emission shipping lane, or what many industry experts refer to as a “green corridor.”

Unalaska and Adak islands in the Aleutians are in perfect locations to become pit stops in a trans-Pacific green corridor. Most of the international ships crossing from west to east follow the same path, and those two communities are right in the middle: about halfway through one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

“Because of their strategic location, they could be a first player in this green corridor that's already been talked about, between China and the United States,” Georgeff said.

Establishing a green corridor could yield significant economic benefits for Adak and Unalaska. The ICCT study estimates a market of more than $1 billion a year, if the Aleutians become a full-fledged hydrogen hub.

The United Nations has called for global leaders to work towards decarbonization of maritime shipping. And the Biden Administration has pledged to work with the U.N. to develop hydrogen and renewable energies in the American shipping industry.

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference takes place next month in Egypt, when global leaders are expected to discuss global greenhouse emission standards for the maritime shipping sector.

Theo Greenly reports from the Aleutians as a Report for America corps member. He got his start in public radio at KCRW in Santa Monica, California, and has produced radio stories and podcasts for stations around the country.
Related Content
  • Lila Roll has been with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union since 2001. It’s taken her years to climb the ladder to become a road driver, the highest qualification for drivers. She says that qualification is the prerequisite to train to operate a top pick, a large piece of machinery designed to pick up and move large shipping containers. Roll has spent the last two weeks learning how to operate the machine. And even though it’s taken her years to qualify for this training, it will still take a number of years to truly become proficient. The union is racing to train people for all sorts of equipment, because many of the top-skilled workers are retiring.
  • Bering Sea snow crab will close for the first time in the fishery’s history. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday afternoon that snow crab — also known as opilio crab — and Bristol Bay red king crab would not open for the upcoming fall and winter fishing seasons. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist for ADF&G, said stocks are just too low to justify opening either fishery. “All of our crab stocks in the Bering Sea have seen declines the last few years,” Westphal said. “[For] red king crab, we've been seeing declines for a little over a decade now. We just see very little recruitment coming into the population — not a lot of crab maturing into a fishable size. And so we're just seeing more of that this year.”
  • The labor shortage hitting the nation is particularly pronounced in Alaska, where the rate of unfilled positions is about twice the national average, according to the state’s labor data. And in the Aleutian community of Unalaska, you can see it playing out with tugboat mariners.