Blue sky ideas: green sea thinking will lift sales of sails
Clydebank, home to big shipyards during Britain’s industrial revolution, lent its name to the declaration on green shipping that emerged from COP26. Countries including the US and UK agreed to create zero-emission shipping corridors.
Disappointingly, the agreement lacked clear targets on emissions. These are needed to encourage a new era of low-carbon sailing whose technology could hark back to the millennia before combustion-powered vessels took over. This is the third blue sky idea we examine in today’s thematic column.
Switching to sustainable fuels is the first stop for most operators, though. International legislation to limit sulphur levels in marine fuels only came into place in 2020. Change is slow.
Demand for green supply chains is propelling the private sector faster. Big Danish shipper Maersk plans to deploy its first carbon-neutral ship by 2023. It will run on methanol. The biofuel is one of three green fuels the Danish group hopes to trial. The others are lignin-based ethanol and ammonia produced from green hydrogen.
Environmentalists are meanwhile opposing plans for ships powered by liquefied natural gas. Methane has a potent greenhouse effect when emitted. Fears are growing that leaky engine designs will do more harm than good.
One solution that predates even the glory days of Clydebank is wind power. Rotor sails are already being fitted to bulk carriers and cruise ships to improve fuel efficiency. The cylindrical rotors aid propulsion by harnessing the spinning force of the Magnus effect. Kite sail systems might offer similar gains.
New ship designs to harness wind power are in the works. Roll-on roll-off transporter Canopée, under construction in Holland, features four solid wing sails to assist traditional engines. Sweden’s Alfa Laval and Wallenius, which is headquartered in Norway, have more ambitious plans. A joint venture hopes to implement Oceanbird telescopic solid sail technology on a transatlantic car carrier, reducing emissions by 90 per cent.
Accounting for shipping emissions in national climate plans would give states a greater incentive to act, thinks Jacob Armstrong of Transport & Environment. It would also facilitate the ramp-up of new marine technologies. Reinventing the sail should not be too much of a technical challenge. But it needs political tailwinds to make it fully out of harbour.
This is the third of five articles on blue sky thinking published by Lex today. Look out for the others in Lex online.
The nationality of Maersk was corrected after publication.