Boaters who pulled up to the fuel dock this summer at St. Andrews Marina in Panama City, Florida, saw something highly unusual: images on the pumps touting “sustainable marine fuel.” From their helms, boaters could see the selling points in big, bold letters. Ethanol free. High octane—93 octane, to be precise. The partially renewable fuel, a non-alcohol, high-octane gasoline mixed with renewable content, reduces CO2 emissions by up to 30 percent more than E10 fuels and is a first step in reducing carbon emissions for recreational boating. The fuel is not fully carbon neutral, but a step towards that goal.

“We have a lot of charter fishing and guide boats. We’re in the middle of snapper season, so they come in daily,” marina superintendent Brian Hamilton told Soundings in late July, about a month after the fuel started to sell. “The biggest thing for them is the price, so we had to work a little bit with our distributor to get the price down to where it’s affordable for these people, but nobody has reported any problems at all.”

Arriving at this moment towards a more sustainable marine fuel has been a years-long process. St. Andrews Marina is part of a first-of-its-kind pilot program created by the National Marine Manufacturers Association, Suzuki Marine, the fuel company Hyperfuels and the chemical company LyondellBasell. Their goal is to help reduce the recreational boating industry’s carbon emissions with a partially renewable fuel that can be used in existing boats, without any modifications needed to the boat’s engine or the boat itself.

“We’ve done the research on sustainable marine fuels. Now, we’re demonstrating as an industry that we can actually bring some of these products to market,” says Jeff Wasil, senior director of environmental, health and safety compliance for the NMMA. “If you’re a boater, you really should be excited about this. It gives you an option to do your part without going out and buying a new boat, and without any compromise to the boat’s performance.”

Giving boaters the choice to use a partially renewable marine fuel is one of several pathways to decarbonization that the International Council of Marine Industry Associations identified in a study last year. The ICOMIA report also notes that boaters can switch to electric, hybrid and hydrogen propulsion systems. The expense and technological limitations of those options remain a challenge for many boaters and boatbuilders, while a partially renewable marine fuel can be a much easier sell.

“That’s the nice thing. You’ve got a 2024 boat or a 1974 boat, it doesn’t matter,” Wasil says. “This stuff is compatible.”

There is, however, the problem of how to get these “drop-in fuels” to marina docks. Wasil and other pilot program leaders spent more than two years trying to figure out the logistics for just the single location in Florida. Wasil’s team told people they knew at Suzuki about an NMMA project focused on sustainable marine fuels. Suzuki had been opening a facility in Panama City, Florida, so its team knew all the players involved in building out infrastructure. Those relationships included city officials and staff at the city-owned St. Andrews Marina.

The NMMA also knew that LyondellBasell, which is based in Texas, was making Ideal EMP. It’s a renewable blendstock—a liquid component that can be mixed with existing fuels to reduce exhaust emissions. It’s primarily sold in Europe and Japan. “But they have this big facility in Texas making millions and millions of gallons, and we need to get a few thousand gallons from Texas to Panama City,” Wasil says.

First, the team tried to work with the fuel terminal in Panama City, to store the finished product. “They said, ‘That’s great, how many billions of gallons?’” Wasil recalls. “And we said, ‘Five thousand gallons a month,’ and they said, ‘Go pound sand.’”

Next, the team looked into sending the finished fuel by barge from Texas to Florida. “But they won’t even consider a lease if it’s not billions of gallons,” Wasil says.

They next tried to arrange for tanker trucks on the highways. “It’s at least $5,000 to get a truck and a driver and get it legally to Panama City. You divide that by 5,000 gallons, that’s $1 a gallon,” Wasil says. “If it’s loaded in the terminal at Houston at $3 a gallon, by the time it gets to Panama City, it’s $4, and you haven’t even added any of the costs for taxes and things.”

Then, the team figured it could send the blendstock alone, not the finished fuel that includes it. “What we ended up doing, finally, after going through every scenario known to man, was sending just over 30,000 gallons of Ideal EMP as rail fuel,” Wasil says.

Ideal EMP is loaded onto a rail car, which goes from Texas to a Florida transload facility—a place where cargo is transferred from one type of transportation to another. There, the Ideal EMP is pumped out of the rail car and into a tank on a Bobtail truck. “That’s the local delivery guy. He needs to run over to Chevron, pick up a certain quantity of gasoline from the terminal in his Bobtail truck, drive it to where the rail car is, and pump in the percentage of Ideal EMP,” Wasil says.

The Bobtail truck then delivers the final product to the marina, giving boaters the opportunity to purchase a more sustainable marine fuel at the pump.

“There has been overwhelming interest from many, many marinas across the greater Panhandle that want to start selling this fuel,” Wasil adds. “It’s really starting to happen, and yes it’s very exciting.”

This article was originally published in the November 2024 issue.