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London: Europe’s spaceport lies across the Atlantic, just inland of Korou, a small town in French Guiana on the north coast of South America between Brazil and Suriname.
It is far from vulnerable population centres and close to the equator – ideal for blasting things into orbit – but it is a long way from Europe, so anything the European Space Agency wants to carry into space it must first haul across the Atlantic Ocean.
To do so, the agency has commissioned a new ship based on old technology: the Canopée, a 121-metre-long cargo vessel with four 363-square-metre wing sails set on 36-metre masts to help propel it across the seas.
The Canopée 2 is a 121-metre-long cargo vessel that will boast four 363-square-metre wing sails.
These sails are expected to reduce the boat’s fuel consumption by 15 per cent – about 3.5 tonnes of fuel per day – without cutting its speed during an expected 11 annual return voyages.
The futuristic Canopée, says Dr Christiaan de Beukelaer, a specialist in climate policy from the University of Melbourne, is another sign that the world is about to enter a new age of wind.
In 2020, de Beukelaer took what was meant to be a three-week trip aboard the Avontuur, a two-masted gaff-rigged schooner that is considered to be one of the world’s last Atlantic cargo ships under sail, to do field work.
COVID-19 lockdowns ended up keeping him at sea for five months, an adventure that became his book on the return of the wind era, Trade winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping.
The number of large ships with some form of ‘wind assist’ technology will double over the next 12 months.
This week he is in London where the United Nations agency that regulates shipping, the International Maritime Organisation, has been locked in what many see as negotiations of historical significance.
In increasingly tense talks, the IMO’s 175 member nations are for the first time fighting over proposals to introduce emission reduction targets to put it in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding warming to 1.5 degrees, along with a range of measures to give those targets teeth. These include mandates on the use of expensive but cleaner synthetic fuels and levies on each tonne of emissions.
The world’s fleet moves 80 per cent of every traded good on earth and generates about 3 per cent of global emissions, or about 1 billion tonnes a year.
Some nations, including Australia, are baulking at the impact of regulation on trade costs. Small island states, among them members of Australia’s “Pacific family”, argue that their very existence is at stake.
A representative of the Maldives warned during the opening session that, if the measures on the table were not adopted, her seat in the room would be empty at future meetings.
De Beukelaer is among those at the talks who argue new sailing technology might serve as an escape valve. If all the wind technology now available is adopted, he says, the world’s shipping fleet might reach its 2030 emissions reduction targets without driving up the cost of trade.
If the world agrees to adopt a levy, the cost of the cheap dirty fuel – the industry standard – will go up, hopefully making cleaner fuels more competitive.
“If you can reduce your fuel use by 30 per cent, that is 30 per cent you don’t have to pay a levy on,” he says.
That view echoes a report published last month by CE Delft, a Netherlands-based clean energy consultancy, which found that the global maritime industry could reduce emissions by between 28 and 47 per cent by 2030 by reducing speed, adopting available wind technology and using clean fuels.
What will the new tall ships look like?
Gavin Allwright, secretary of the International Windship Association, says the use of wind in shipping has entered a phase of exponential growth.
The number of large ships equipped with some form of “wind assist” technology over the past 12 years was about 23, he says. That figure will double over the next 12 months.
“We are going to be the first global industry that goes from being fully decarbonised to fully carbonised, only to decarbonise again.”
There are about 60,000 ships in the global industry, and Allwright says proven, affordable wind-assist technology could be retrofitted across them all.
“All of this technology has been sitting there, but it has been hiding in racing yachts.”
Now heavy industry is taking notice. Wind might seem quaint, but it has basic advantages over internal combustion engines. It does not rely on fuel that needs to extracted, refined, transported, bunkered and then paid for. It is just there, waiting at the point of use. For free.
Jacques Cousteau invented suction sails which have a thick profile and uses suction to generate large lift forces. The technology has been installed on boats like the Frisian Sea.
The technology to harness wind on modern ships ranges from kites that can be launched from the bows of container vessels, to rigid sails that can be installed in containers and then unfurled once at sea, to towering rotors that can be fitted in rows on the decks of bulk carriers, to hinged sails that can be lowered in port to pass under bridges. Michelin is testing vast inflatable sails.
This equipment can be installed quickly, is nearly fully automated, and can cut fuel consumption by up to 20 per cent. It demands a little extra training but no extra crew.
Even more savings can be made when wind assist technology is combined with what is known as “voyage optimisation”, which is basically an industry term for using new technology to compliment ancient sailing skills.
A shipping company might choose to, say, increase the duration of a voyage by 10 per cent to save a further 15 to 20 per cent of fuel. Ship computers can use weather satellites and even LIDAR imaging to not only plot the best route for wind-assist technology, but help the ship’s pilot efficiently manage trim and attitude.
The Chinese-flagged New Vitality, was built in the 1990s but equipped with rigid sails in 2018, reducing emissions by almost 3000 tonnes a year.
The next breed of wind ships will not be reliant on retro-fitted equipment. Like the Canopée, they will be designed from the keel up to make more efficient use of the wind, or even to be primarily driven by it.
“You can already make a ship that does not need engines, but you would do a fair bit of sitting around,” says Allwright.
In January, Norwegian shipbuilder Wallenius Wilhelmsen secured funding to build the world’s first wind driven roll-on, roll-off car carrier, the Orcelle Wind.
Already some of these ships are building mechanisms to store wind energy that they cannot use and would otherwise be wasted, much as electric cars regenerate their batteries while braking.
The Wind Hunter would sail around in circles, harnessing wind power to turn seawater into stored hydrogen.
Some shipbuilders are pushing the concept even further. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, better known as MOL and one of the world’s four largest bulk carrier lines, is developing a vessel called the Wind Hunter – which will be designed to generate energy at sea via its sails and underwater turbines.
That excess energy would then be used to drive electrolysers that would make hydrogen from seawater, filling the Wind Hunter’s purpose-built tanks.
Sailing in a circular route the Wind Hunter would then operate as a kind of infinite tanker, creating green energy at sea for sale in port. Rather than a zero-carbon ship, the Wind Hunter would be carbon negative.
“We are going to be the first global industry that goes from being fully decarbonised to fully carbonised, only to decarbonise again,” says Allwright.
He believes that the period in which shipping ignored the wind entirely will be a blip in 6000 years of maritime history, an artefact of a time when cheap fuel oil was bunkered abundantly in every port in the world, before its danger to the planet was properly understood.
Nick O’Malley’s travel was supported by the Global Strategic Communications Council, a non-government climate advocacy group.
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