The Lloyd’s Register Maritime Decarbonisation Hub (the Decarb Hub), the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping (MMMCZCS), and partners have collaborated since 2021 on a work program to address safety risks from ammonia as a marine fuel. The program has identified risks to seafarers and developed mitigating recommendations for the design and operation of ammonia-fueled vessels. As shared in a 2023 publication, a range of critical human factors considerations must be addressed for safe operation, including the management of process safety hazards.
The Ammonia Process Safety Management Maturity Self-Assessment tool has been developed as a follow-up to those findings. It provides the maritime industry with a methodology for evaluating ammonia safety readiness against a Process Safety Management (PSM) framework, allowing users to identify critical gaps and build organizational capabilities needed to safely manage ammonia as a fuel.
Why use this tool?
The adoption of alternative fuels in shipping, for the purpose of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, will entail significant changes in maritime safety management. Ammonia has received particular attention as a high-potential route to maritime decarbonization that – in its deployment – also requires a careful re-evaluation of maritime safety practices.
While the general need for this re-evaluation is clear, our understanding of the particular character of the required changes is less settled. Vessel owners, operators, and managers contemplating use of ammonia as a fuel are confronted with important safety management questions onboard and onshore for which there are few ready answers:
Where do we begin?
What aspects of our operation should we focus on when implementing change?
How can we be confident that our operation is ammonia-ready?
This tool provides a basis for developing initial answers to these questions. It is grounded in a belief that the maritime industry can learn from other safety-critical industries that have track records of safely handling hazardous molecules like ammonia. Specifically, it describes how the PSM approach to managing safety – well-established in sectors such as chemical and oil & gas manufacturing – can be applied in the maritime context to help orient the industry to the safety management requirements of an ammonia-powered future.
Who is this tool for?
The primary audiences for this tool are those vessel owners, operators and managers who are in the process of adopting ammonia as a marine fuel, or considering doing so. This includes both shore-based and seagoing vessel management. For these audiences, this tool provides a mechanism for evaluating present safety management arrangements against a PSM framework, and for identifying the aspects of these arrangements that may require improvement.
In addition to these primary audiences, this tool may also be of interest to stakeholders with a more general interest in assuring safe maritime operations, including seafarers, operators using fuels other than ammonia, regulators, insurers, and training establishments. While the development of this tool has been motivated by the challenge of assuring the safe deployment of ammonia as a marine fuel, there may nevertheless be value in maritime stakeholders who are not (or not yet) considering adopting ammonia as a fuel evaluating their activities through the lens provided by PSM. We welcome engagement from this extended audience as part of the wider dialogue supporting continuous improvement in maritime safety outcomes.
Structure
For ease of use, the framework is separated into three documents that should be used together when performing self-assessments. These are:
A user guide that introduces the tool's background and conceptual foundations, and explains how to use the tool
Element maturity tables that describe what different levels of maturity look like for different aspects of safety
An assessment template (including the editable template) where users can record how their operation compares to the levels described in the maturity tables, as well as evidence for the self-assessment and actions to improve
Built through extensive industry collaboration
The PSM framework was developed with extensive cross-sector collaboration between seventeen organizations in the maritime industry and beyond. It provides the wider industry with a framework to support the safe introduction of ammonia as a marine fuel at scale.
We welcome user feedback on the tool via a QR code that can be found in the user guide below.
