Renewable energy firm Drax will invest £1 million (USD$1.3 million) to develop Smart Green Shipping’s FastRig automated wind sail. The sail was shown, in earlier feasibility studies, to save up to 30% fuel on transatlantic routes.
The investment from Drax will be matched by funding from the UK Government’s Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition grant.
Founded in 2014, Smart Green designed its retractable, rigid wing sail, to be easily retrofitted to existing commercial vessels with available deck space, such as bulkers and tankers. The company said some 40,000 of these ships are suitable for conversion to sailing hybrid. The FastRig, designed and manufactured in the UK from 100% recyclable materials, is designed to reduce not only fuel consumption, but also greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and operating costs on commercial vessels.
Smart Green Shipping is currently undertaking sea trials of the FastRig wind sail on one of Nuclear Transport Solutions’ specialist vessels, the Pacific Grebe – a purpose-built ship designed to carry nuclear cargo. The sea trials will conclude by the end of October.
If the latest demonstration is successful, the company said, work to install the technology on a commercial biomass vessel can begin. The technology could also prove vital to further reducing supply chain emissions from the bulk transport of Drax’s sustainable biomass, which is used to produce around 8% of Britain’s renewable power.
Drax aims to become a carbon-negative company by 2030 by installing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage at the Drax Power Station in Yorkshire.
The investment in the project will also be used to develop Smart Green Shipping’s suite of wind-assist solutions including FastRoute, a digital system co-created with the University of Southampton, that combines AI with high-performance computing to analyze weather data and optimize routes for ships equipped to harness wind power.
“Wind is abundant, free, and exclusively available to any ship equipped to use it,” said Diane Gilpin, CEO and founder of Smart Green Shipping. “Modern 21st century easily retrofittable wing sails lower the cost of propelling ships, which reduces the dependency on commodity-based fuels – whether fossil or alternative fuels – and improves supply chain certainty,”
