The Port of Los Angeles played host to a major maritime trade milestone last month, as the landing point for the first dual-fuel container vessel to call at a U.S. port.

That ship – a brand new vessel from Danish logistics giant A.P. Moller-Maersk – also got its traditional naming ceremony in the San Pedro facility. The ship – which had just completed a trans-Pacific journey running entirely on green methanol – was formally christened as Alette Maersk, with Long Beach snowboarding Olympian Chloe Kim serving as the ship’s godmother.

The ship – one of five operating in Maersk’s fleet, with 20 more on the way – represents a step toward the shipping company’s goal of moving 25% of its cargo with at least low-emission fuel by 2030 and achieving net-zero operations by 2040.

“The consequences of climate change are not distant warnings,” Maersk Chief Executive Vincent Clerc said at the ceremony last week, “but present reality, demanding urgent attention and immediate action across industries and in close partnerships between companies, governments and regulators.”

The vessel, which was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea, has a cargo capacity of 16,592 containers. In a deviation from typical container ship designs, the bridge is at the front of the vessel instead of the back; this was done to improve container capacity, thus improving fuel consumption per container.

It is designed to run on methanol, with Maersk planning to use so-called “green methanol” – produced using biomass or by synthesizing it with extracted carbon dioxide and hydrogen. (The ignition properties of methanol require a pilot fuel, such as biodiesel, to get the engines ramped up and for when navigating precise areas such as ports.)

This goal will be a challenge for Maersk and other shippers making the transition. Few ports have a meaningful infrastructure to produce and store the fuel and the global market for it remains nascent; illustrating the novelty of the technology, Alette Maersk’s crew reported having to solve issues with fuel injection on its maiden voyage. Lack of strong demand for the fuel makes it expensive, which is exacerbated by the fact you need about double the volume to achieve what typical bunker fuels do. The ship contains seven additional tanks, for alternative fuels, to account for the green methanol deficit in the world’s ports.

“It is crucial that the future of net-zero shipping is not only environmentally but also financially sustainable,” Clerc said. “This means that we need a pricing mechanism to close the gap between fossil and green fuels.”

To that end, Maersk and its major customers – Nike among them – are lobbying governments and regulators to create subsidies for maritime fuels similar to those for land- and air-based transportation. The choice of Kim, who is sponsored by Nike, as Alette Maersk’s godmother is reflective of this collaboration.

Kim bemoaned a potential future without enough snowfall to facilitate sports like snowboarding. At the ceremony, she highlighted that maritime shipping remained the most efficient and sustainable way to transport goods on a global scale. Still, it contributes about 11% of global emissions annually, and ports tend to be the highest single sources of emissions in their cities.

“Given the scale of ocean-based trade, it also comes with a significant carbon footprint,” Kim said. “This is why collaboration and partnerships like this one today are key.”