Efficiency Technologies

These are the stories we love.  Advances in efficiency change industries.  No competitor wants to be left behind in the pricing-expenses war.

The maritime industry has a huge impact on our environment.  We know special attention needs to be spent on our fragile ocean health.  The global economy needs to keep humming.  International shipping will not abate, it will grow.  Seeing steamship companies drive cleaner for financial gain is the win-win we look for in all sectors of business.

We wish Norsepower Oy good luck in harnessing the wind to help move their mighty ships.

Efficiency Technologies Ready To Set Sail

by Helen Marks and Bianca Wachtel
       

Last week, as the world’s leading maritime players gathered in Oslo for the 50th Nor-Shipping conference, Norsepower Oy Ltd. shared the successful trial of its Rotor Sail Solution, a wind propulsion technology for maritime ships. Verified by ship design and operation software modeling firm NAPA and supported by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Norsepower’s trials confirm fuel savings of 2.6 percent using a single small Rotor Sail on a route in the North Sea. With these fuel savings, this new wind propulsion technology has a payback period of just four years.

The Norsepower Rotor Sail Solution is a modernized version of the Flettner rotor—a spinning vertical cylinder that harnesses wind power to propel a ship. The rotor generates thrust for the same reason that a spinning baseball curves through the air after it’s thrown—the Magnus effect. When air moves across a rotating body, it exerts a force perpendicular to the direction of the air. In favorable wind conditions, Norsepower Rotor Sails allow the vessel to throttle back the main engines, supplying the power needed to maintain speed and voyage time while reducing fuel and emissions.

Rotor Sails can be installed on new vessels or retrofitted on existing ships without requiring the vessel—a potentially multi-million-dollar asset—to be out of service, known as off-hire.

The Norsepower Rotor Sail Solution was installed on the 9,700 dead weight tonnage roll-on-roll-off (RoRo) carrier MS Estraden. Owned by Bore, the leading Finnish RoRo shipping company, MS Estraden operates in a continuous service between the Netherlands and the UK, sailing through the North Sea’s windy corridors at speeds of 16 knots. The installation on the MS Estraden was completed in two parts: the required foundations were installed during a normal dry-dock stay, followed by the 18-meter-high rotor during an ordinary seven-hour harbor stay.

Norsepower’s target installation for vessels is four large rotors installed on one vessel. With these larger installations, Norsepower forecasts substantial savings of 20 percent for vessels traveling on favorable wind routes. Norsepower’s announcement is heralded as a major advancement for shipping.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR EFFICIENCY

Of course, this is just one technology. However, the announcement comes at an important time—when efficiency solutions finally have the opportunity to take off in the shipping industry.

Historically, when fuel prices have risen, the focus on technologies like Norsepower’s in the shipping industry has intensified. But, as soon as fuel prices drop, attention drifts back to other priorities, even though these technologies offer returns no matter the fuel price.

Now, market trends are converging to create promise for efficiency technologies, despite low fuel prices. A growing number of stakeholders are prioritizing efficiency, including charterers (those that rent ships), banks, port authorities, and ship registries. With this growing prioritization, these parties are starting to shift money towards and reward more-efficient vessels.

For example, today, charterers representing 20 percent of global shipped tonnage have policies in place to avoid using the most-inefficient ships based on the GHG Emissions Rating, developed by maritime risk-management specialist RightShip and Carbon War Room. That’s a 450-percent increase in the past 2.5 years, and we expect that number to continue growing in the coming years.

Alongside the shift from charterers, shipping banks are starting to acknowledge the development of a two-tier market, in which efficient vessels are able to command a premium rate over less-efficient vessels. As a result, banks are recognizing the impact that ship efficiency has on assets on their books, and are using efficiency data to assess risk and return, and inform credit approvals and re-sale and scrapping decisions. As banks encourage efficiency retrofits where they make sense, and demonstrate to shipowners that efficient ships are more profitable, this financial lever in the industry will act as a powerful incentive for shipowners to retrofit for greater efficiency.

Complementing this progress, ambitious leaders, such as those behind Norsepower and Bore, are demonstrating the viability of efficiency technologies—as well as the financial gains they offer—and creating greater credibility for emerging technologies. In fact, with the results from the single-rotor trial, Bore is already looking ahead to the opportunity of two rotors on one ship. “We are proud to be the first shipowner to install the Norsepower Rotor Sail, and demonstrate that wind propulsion technology has verifiable five-percent fuel savings on a yearly basis, can be retrofitted without any off-hire costs, and is extremely easy to use in practice. It’s our goal to find ways to establish sustainable shipping with minimal impact on our environment,” say sJörgen Mansnerus, vice president of Bore.

The Norsepower announcement is one of many such trials that can pave the way to a low-carbon shipping industry. However, finding companies willing to pioneer technologies on their vessels is no easy feat. Building such confidence in emerging technologies is the integral focus of Carbon War Room and University College London’s Shipping Innovation Fast-Tracker (SHIFT), in which Norsepower participates alongside other technology companies. The program matches innovative technology companies, shipowners and operators, and investors to boost the profile of low-carbon opportunities and promote investment in the industry.

WHY CHARTERS SHOULD RIDE THIS WAVE

Fuel buyers can buttress their balance sheet by adopting fuel-saving technologies, automatically protecting them from the pressures of a tenuous oil market. What makes the proposition even more enticing is the fact that successful technologies, like the Rotor Sail Solution, exist today, and can be deployed and scaled quickly.

“Modern wind systems are demonstrating measurable and meaningful fuel savings for ships. As wind propulsion, air bubble systems, and other ground-breaking technologies are increasingly adopted and become mainstream, the industry will reap the rewards of lower fuel costs—more sustainable than those from short-term price decreases, and be able to stay ahead of external pressures,” says Jose Maria Figueres, chair of the board of Rocky Mountain Institute and Carbon War Room.

In addition, by incorporating these successful technologies into new builds and existing vessels, shipowners can stay ahead of policy. While the industry’s existing fleet is not currently subject to stringent policy measures or mandates to meet efficiency requirements, such policy could arrive and leave the industry in a pinch, if it is not prepared. And, if such policy arises, shipowners that have already retrofitted will stand to gain additional competitive advantage.