Inspired by kitesurfing, French firms want to deploy the same wind technology to propel everything from yachts to cargo ships in order to cut the shipping industry’s massive carbon footprint.
The sector is under fresh pressure to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) sealed a deal on Friday that raises its emissions-reduction targets.
In Arcachon Bay in southwest France, the start-up Beyond The Sea tested a blue inflatable kite sail the size of a small studio to pull a specially designed catamaran across the water.
Photo: AFP
“Are you ready to jibe?” company founder Yves Parlier said, using kitesurfing lingo to speak to this team of engineers steering the 25 square meter kite.
In kitesurfing, riders use their hands to control the kite, but on Parlier’s SeaKite catamaran, an automated traction system is used for the kite, with winches and artificial intelligence that adapts the sail’s position to the wind conditions.
The goal is to design much bigger kite sails that could one day pull yachts, trawlers and even container ships.
“It’s a phenomenal system of traction which allows one to reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent on average,” said Parlier, a former winner of transatlantic sailing competitions.
The potential is huge given that there are nearly 100,000 merchant ships crisscrossing the oceans and 4.6 million fishing trawlers in the world.
The Wind Ship association, which was created in 2019 in France with the aim of greening the maritime sector, says the market could be worth 4 billion euros (US$4.39 billion) by 2030 with around 1,400 vessels fitted with such kites.
In March next year, Beyond The Sea plans to carry out similar tests using its specially designed kites off the waters of Norway and Japan and in the Mediterranean.
The company hopes to double the size of its kites every year, reaching 800 square meters in four years, executive director Marc Thienpont said.
The shipping industry has to find alternatives to fossil fuels, with the IMO on Friday setting a net zero emissions target for “close to 2050,” with progressive reduction goals of at least 20 percent by 2020 and at least 70 percent by 2040 compared to 2008 levels.
While the previous target was for a 50 percent reduction by mid-century, climate campaigners said the decision did not go far enough to help the battle against global warming.
Airseas, another French company in which European aviation giant Airbus SE holds 11 percent stake, is testing a kite spanning 500 square meters — almost twice the size of two tennis courts — which it hopes to double for larger ships.
The company, based in the western city of Nantes, late last year fitted out a bulk carrier belonging to the Japanese firm K. Line, its biggest client, which has placed five confirmed orders for its Seawing.
It has also kitted a roll-on, roll-off ship transporting equipment for A320 planes between the French port of Saint-Nazaire and the port of Mobile in the southern US state of Alabama where Airbus has a factory.
Another alternative solution has surfaced with the French firm Chantiers de l’Atlantique, whose Solid Sail designed for ocean liners is made up of panels fitted to a rigid sail that can be inclined to allow the ships to pass under bridges.
There are also semi-rigid sails manufactured by Ayro and used on the 121-meter-long cargo ship Canopee to transport elements of the Ariane 6 launcher from Europe to French Guiana.
Some new French shipping companies are meanwhile using vessels only harnessing wind power such as Zephyr et Boree, Windcoop, Neoline ou Towt.
“In France, there is a level of operational maturity which allows commercialization” of the adapted kites and sails, Wind Ship’s Lise Detrimont said.
However, if the sector has the wind in its sails, its attractiveness suffers from a price of a barrel of heavy fuel oil currently at its lowest.
“Maritime transport costs nothing until environmental regulations come into force,” Detrimont said.
The carbon-free fuel lobby is also a brake, she said, pointing out that its cost was “five to seven times” higher than conventional fuel oil and advocating its hybrid use along with sailing.
The sector is in talks with the French government to recognize wind as a fuel. Detrimont said that with this in hand, over 30,000 jobs would be created in 2030.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS