Sometimes to go forward you must look backwards backwards. Wind-powered ships have been used since ancient times, ever since the invention of the sail. With the advent of fuel powered ships, however, the sail fell out of favor as a practical way to move large boats and ships across the ocean. Now, sails are making a comeback as a way to lower the carbon-emissions inherent in the fuel-powered shipping industry.
Shipping generates tons of global emissions
Shipping is not an environmentally friendly industry. In fact, according to Positive News, the industry is responsible for about three percent of global emissions.
That is a lot of carbon dioxide: nearly 837 million British tonnes, according to the BBC. Luckily, the leading figures in the industry have made a pledge to become planet-warming gasses net zero by 2050. This is a difficult task.
“The shipping industry does not yet have a clear decarbonisation pathway and, given the scale the challenge and the diversity of the world shipping fleet, there is unlikely to be a single solution for the industry in the short or medium term,” Stephen Gordon, managing director at the maritime data firm Clarksons Research, told the BBC. This is where the Pyxis Ocean comes in.
Like a flying aircraft
The Pyxis Ocean is a Mitshubisi-owned bulker ship retrofitted with two “Wind Wings,” that was designed by the British company, BAR technologies, according to Positive News. The ship made its maiden journey crossing the ocean from Singapore to Brazil in 2023.
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Introducing The Pyxis Ocean, a pioneering wind-powered cargo ship.
“If you’d asked me two and a half years ago whether wind power would ever again play a significant role in shipping, I would have been skeptical,” Aleksander Askeland, CSO of Norway-based Yara Marine, which oversaw WindWings’ build and installation told Positive News.
“You need wind to overcome a threshold where it becomes meaningful, and that’s not at all obvious when you have such large vessels to move around. It’s a completely different game to the age of sail.”
But the Wind Wings are not quite sails. Standing up to 37 meters tall, they are designed using the same type of aerodynamic principles that make it possible for an aircraft to fly.
When not being used, the sails fold down onto the ship’s deck. It is estimated that the wings will save around 3 tons of fuel a day. That is a lot of fuel.
With new, cleaner fuels still in the works, reported the BBC, these partial measures to reduce carbon emissions are a godsend. “Ultimately we do need zero-carbon fuels on all ships, but in the meantime, it is imperative to make every journey as efficient as possible,” Dr Simon Bullock, shipping researcher at the Tyndall Centre, at the University of Manchester, told the BBC.
Luckily wind-powered technology is gaining traction. About 100 out of every 110,000 new-build ships are being built using some sort of wind technology, and that doesn’t take into account ships like the Pyxis Ocean which have been, or will be retrofitted with sails, kites, rotors, or other types of wind-powered mechanisms.
This environmentally friendly ship is a testament to the fact that sometimes the solutions to modern problems lie in the past.
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