A Cargill carrier ship has launched its first voyage since being fitted with special sails, aiming to study how harnessing wind power can cut emissions and energy usage in the shipping sector, the U.S. commodities group said on Monday (Aug 21). - REUTERS
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00:00 Notice anything different about this carrier ship?
00:03 It's been fitted with two special sails called wind wings,
00:07 which study how harnessing wind power can cut emissions
00:10 and energy usage in the shipping sector.
00:13 This voyage is the five-year-old Pixis Ocean's first
00:16 with its new sails.
00:18 A first of many as the maritime industry as a whole
00:21 explores new technologies in an attempt to move away
00:25 from dirty bunker fuel.
00:27 - The maritime industry's got a decarbonization challenge
00:29 ahead of it.
00:31 This is not gonna solve the problem entirely,
00:33 but it's a step in the right direction.
00:36 - Cargill, one of the world's largest shipping charters,
00:39 has been developing the Pixis Ocean's
00:41 nearly 125-foot-tall wind wings pilot project for years.
00:46 It's a course companies in the maritime industry
00:49 have been forced to take as investors
00:51 and environmental groups push them
00:54 to accelerate decarbonization in an industry
00:57 which accounts for nearly 3% of global CO2 emissions.
01:01 But as new technologies blossom,
01:04 the idea of harnessing wind for energy is an old one.
01:08 Before the switch to steam and diesel engines,
01:10 wind was once the common way of propelling ships.
01:14 - It is a kind of back to the future, if you like.
01:16 - Simon Schofield is the chief technology officer
01:19 at Bar Technologies, the company that developed
01:22 wind wing sails, which were then built
01:24 by Norway's Yara Marine Technologies.
01:26 - When you see an aircraft come to land
01:28 and it deploys its leading edge flap
01:31 and its flaps at the back when a plane lands,
01:34 we do something very, very similar,
01:36 which allows us to control what we call the camber,
01:39 the shape of the wing, which controls the amount of power.
01:42 Then we can align the wing at any direction
01:45 compared to the wind direction.
01:48 And this is done all automatically,
01:49 and it maximizes the amount of energy
01:51 we're effectively harvesting from the wind.
01:54 - The sails don't only cut down CO2 emissions,
01:57 Schofield adds, it also cuts down
01:59 how much fuel they purchase.
02:01 He says the Pyxis Ocean can save up to 40%
02:04 of fuel consumption, which he believes
02:06 is a step in the right direction,
02:08 considering how expensive fuel has become.
02:11 - This has got the potential to be mainstream.
02:13 Obviously, it doesn't suit all vessels
02:16 because of practical reasons,
02:18 but certainly on bulk carriers and tankers,
02:21 we can see a large proportion of new builds
02:23 and a huge number of retrofits in the coming years
02:27 being fitted with wind technology of one sort or another,
02:31 both from an environmental standpoint,
02:34 but also as the cost of fuels become more expensive,
02:38 and especially the adoption of future fuels,
02:42 it's gonna mean that it becomes economically
02:44 a bit of a no-brainer as well.
02:46 - Cargo says the Pyxis Ocean
02:48 will sail from Singapore to Brazil
02:50 and is then likely to transport a cargo of grain
02:53 to Denmark.
02:54 The vessel is said to then remain
02:56 in the North Atlantic area to maximize wind usage.