By Yashasvini Razdan, 2:35 PM ET
A.P. Moller-Maersk will be buying a minority stake in California-based start-up, WasteFuel, which is backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The financial details of the deal haven’t been revealed by the companies.
Bloomberg reported that Maersk consumes about 12 million tonnes of marine oil per year, roughly equal to all the oil produced in the world in a single day.
The world’s largest container line said that this investment is part of its wider strategy towards developing green energy and new technologies to de-carbonize its fleet by 2050.
The latest investment will allow WasteFuel to develop biorefineries to produce sustainable fuels from unrecoverable waste.
As part of the deal, Maersk’s head of decarbonization, Morten Bo Christiansen, will join WasteFuel’s board. Christiansen told Bloomberg that Maersk plans to buy more green fuel startups soon.
“We expect to invest in more because so much needs to happen. We want to stimulate the market in all technologies and all geographies,” he said.
WasteFuel is also developing projects in Asia and the Americas including a biorefinery in Manila, Philippines, to produce low-carbon fuels. In February private aviation firm NetJets, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, pledged to buy at least 100 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel from WasteFuel across the next 10 years.
Picture Credits: Maersk