Shipping powered by diesel engines pollute the environment. This includes air pollution, water pollution and acoustic and oil pollution. It is said that ships are responsible for more than 18% of nitrogen oxides pollution and 3% of greenhouse gas emissions.
It is said that this amount of pollution is can parable to major carbon-emitting countries. My research tells me that if global shipping were a country, it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions! That’s quite startling.
And all the more reason why the world’s first hybrid wind-powered industrial vessel-a cargo ship-is so important. The vessel set sail from Bordeaux to carry rocket parts across the Atlantic. The products were destined for the European Space Agency’s Ariane program.
This amazing vessel is equipped with collapsible wing sales. The Canopée is French-flagged and it has gone into regular service which is a first. The ship completed sea trials last month.
It saves up to 40% in fuel because of its automated wing sails. The computer analyses the weather and forecasts concerning the wind direction and strength and deploys the sails to maximum effect.
The ship is 400 feet long (120 m) and 22 m wide. There are 437 m high wing sails consisting of two flaps. They can turn through 360° to catch to wind at the right angle. The designer of the sails said that they generate far more power than conventional sails.
These sails work a little bit like aircraft wings which force an aircraft off the ground because of air pressure below the wings.
Romain Grandsart, of Ayro, a French start-up which manufactured the sales said that “They’re like plane wings with flaps that move to give the plane lift for takeoff.”
There have been trials without the sails and the time came to work with them and they were added during the summer and this is now the first real working voyage, said Jean-Michel Berud, the president of Jifmar Offshore Services.
The Canopée is for the exclusive use of the European Space Agency. The ship will make 11 return trips to French Guiana each year. On Sunday it sailed from Bordeaux to Bremen in Germany to pick up the top section of the Ariane 6 launch vehicle.
The vessel will then head to Rotterdam to collect the nose of the rocket which is the section that protects the cargo (satellites). The next port of call for the vessel will be Le Havre where the central part of the launcher will be loaded.
The ship will then return to Bordeaux for fuel and rocket propulsion systems before re-crossing the Atlantic. It is planned to arrive in November in French Guiana which is on the northern coast of South America. The trip takes 28 days in all.
This amazing ship was specifically designed to transport the new launch vehicle and it ‘blazes a trail for zero-carbon maritime transport’ according to Christophe Caralp of ArianeGroup.
The Times tells me that the “world’s 100,000 commercial ships consume some 300 million tonnes of fuel each year, accounting for about 3% of global carbon emissions”.
The target for the International Maritime Organisation is for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by 2050. This ship is perhaps the beginning in that long process.
Global warming is perhaps the biggest killer of wildlife on the planet and is contributing to the sixth mass extinction of animal species. It is a human-created problem of gigantic proportions.
