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The first UK trial of a rigid sail that can be fitted on commercial ships to reduce their carbon footprint is under way in the Irish Sea.
The sail being tested is more like an aircraft wing than the traditional sheet of billowing canvas. And the vessel it’s been fixed to is no ordinary ship either.
It’s one of the UK’s fleet of three nuclear transport vessels, specially designed to move high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel stored at Sellafield in Cumbria to destinations like Japan under long-standing nuclear decommissioning treaties.
“When this opportunity came up for us to trial a sail, we thought we’d be ideally placed to support a UK company that’s looking at an effective solution,” said Peter Buchan, managing director of shipping at Nuclear Transport Solutions, which is part of the government-owned Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
“We’ve got highly safe and highly secure operations, so if you can make a sail work in our environment, then I’m sure that’s able to be translatable to right across the maritime industry.”
Peter Buchan, managing director of shipping at Nuclear Transport Solutions
Most commercial ships have 30 or 40-year life spans and there are currently few alternatives to oil-burning engines for most ship types.
It’s why the overall contribution of shipping to global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to grow from a 3% share today to 10% by 2050.
The industry is also squeezed by volatile fuel prices, meaning growing interest from the industry in modern iterations of an ancient technology.
There have been previous demonstrations of various types of sail technologies fitted to ships, including kites, revolving wind-powered generators and wing-like sails.
But detailed evidence of how ships designed for diesel power perform under sail and how well they work on modern routes is lacking, say industry experts.
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