Winds of change for the shipping sector

A press release from the University of Manchester: Wind propulsion such as kites and Flettner rotors could offer a viable route to help cut CO2 emissions in the shipping sector, according to Dr Michael Traut, a Research Associate from The University of Manchester.

Speaking at the ‘Shipping in Changing Climates: provisioning the future’ Conference in Liverpool today (Thursday), Dr Traut will present research that uses a new model to couple wind-power technologies with weather data to show how in theory, and with supporting incentives, wind energy could cut CO2 and fuel use by as much as 50% on smaller cargo vessels up to 5,000 dead weight tonnes. This would also have a knock-on impact of cutting sulphur and nitrogen oxide and dioxide emissions by reducing the total amount of fuel burnt.

The study, to be presented in a session entitled ‘Future Shipping Propulsion’, will be discussed alongside presentations from more than 30 other speakers from across academia and the shipping industry. All the speakers will be exploring new issues and opportunities on the horizon for the industry in meeting the challenges faced by climate change.

The conference, sponsored by Lloyd’s Register and Shell, is integral to an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) and industry-funded consortium project, and will bring together an audience made up of industrialists, policymakers and academics to debate how climate change may impact on the shipping sector worldwide.

The Shipping in Changing Climates project combines expertise from two substantial existing shipping research projects with two additional research partners. Project lead Professor Paul Wrobel, from UCL, said: “Our vision is to create an enduring, multi-disciplinary and independent research community strongly linked to industry and capable of informing the policy making process by developing new knowledge and understanding of the shipping system, its energy efficiency and emissions, and its transition to a low carbon, more resilient future.”...

Flettner rotors powering a German vessel, RoLo cargo ship E-Ship 1. Shot by kaʁstn Disk/Cat, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license