Saving energy at sea

The Age of Sail may be over, but the wind is still free:

Oil at more than $90 a barrel is concentrating minds in the shipping industry. Higher fuel costs and mounting pressure to curb emissions are leading modern merchant fleets to rediscover the ancient power of the sail.

The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela on Tuesday, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20 percent, or $1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill.

Meanwhile, what works on land works on water, too:

But if Skysails is a relatively elaborate solution . . . shipping companies seeking immediate answers to soaring fuel prices and the need to cut emissions are, simply, slowing down. . .

"The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily," Klein, whose organization runs safety surveys on more than 6,000 ships worldwide, told Reuters.

"Slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down," he added.

Savings of up to 50% in fuel consumption are mentioned later in the article. From the Washington Post, which also notes:

The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 percent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That's about 5 percent of the world's total. . .

Shipping was excluded from the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to slow climate change, and many nations want the industry to be made accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to Kyoto, which runs to 2012.

Posted by David on January 22, 2008 2:35 PM