Slower boats to China as ship owners save fuel

Oil at more than $90 a barrel is concentrating minds in the shipping industry. Higher fuel costs and mounting pressure to curb emissions are leading modern merchant fleets to rediscover the ancient power of the sail.

The world’s first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela on Tuesday, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20 percent, or $1,600, from the ship’s daily fuel bill.
“We aim to prove it pays to protect the environment,” Wrage told Reuters. “Showing that ecology and economics are not contradictions motivates us all.”

The 10,000-tonne ‘MS Beluga SkySails’ — which will use a computer-guided kite to harness powerful ocean winds far above the surface and support the engine — combines modern technology with know-how that has been in use for millennia.

But if Skysails is a relatively elaborate solution, another development shows the march of progress is not always linear: shipping companies seeking immediate answers to soaring fuel prices and the need to cut emissions are, simply, slowing down.

The world’s 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 percent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods, emit 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That’s about 5 percent of the world’s total.

Also, their fuel costs rose by as much as 70 percent last year.

That dramatic increase has ship owners clambering onto a bandwagon to reduce speed as a way to save fuel and cut the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, said Hermann Klein, an executive at Germanischer Lloyd classification society.

“The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily,” Klein, whose organization runs safety surveys on more than 6,000 ships worldwide, told Reuters.

Boston Globe