Taiwan's largest and the world's fourth-largest container shipping operator Evergreen Marine Corp plans to order 100 container ships in 2012 to boost its competitiveness, by which time it expects the global economy to have recovered, local media reports claim.

The Economic Daily News cited Evergreen Marine owner Chang Jung-fa as saying that Evergreen plans to order the new ships to expand its fleet and to replace 30-year-old vessels.

As steel prices are expected to fall in 2011, Evergreen plans to place orders with Japanese and South Korean shipyards, starting about 2012. The total cost of the 100 ships will be US$5.5bn.

Under Evergreen's ship-building plan, 40 per cent of the new ships will be 5,500 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) ships, 30 per cent will be 8,000 TEU, and the rest will be 2,800-3,900 TEUS, the Economic Daily News reported.

Meanwhile, the world's first container ship to use solar power to help generate the energy to drive its propellers took to the seas over the Christmas period, in a move designed to cut carbon emissions and reduce fuel costs, reports Businessgreen.com.

Auriga Leader, a freighter owned and developed by shipping line Nippon Yusen and oil distributor Nippon Oil Corp, was launched last month from a shipyard in the city of Kobe, Japan.

The freighter, which is capable of carrying 6,400 automobiles, has been equipped with 328 solar panels at a cost of US$1.68m.

The ship's operators said that so far the energy generated by the solar array has only been used to power lighting and other applications in the crew's living quarters, but officials insisted the 40KW system could also be used to provide up to 0.2 per cent of power required by the ship's propulsion system.

Nippon Yusen, Japan's largest shipping company, said the move represented a step towards meeting its goal of halving fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions by 2010.

The shipping industry has come under growing pressure to curb carbon emissions in the wake of recent research suggesting it has a larger carbon footprint than the aviation sector, contributing in excess of two per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

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