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Wind Powered Cargo Ship Starts Sailing. PHOTOS/SPLASH
JAKARTA – A British cargo ship named Pyxis Ocean equipped with wind-powered sails has started its maiden voyage.
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Shipping company Cargill, which has chartered the ship, hopes that the technology it carries can help lead to a greener future.
The first trip starts from China to Brazil. This one cargo ship will use the advanced WindWings screen which has a height of up to 37.5 meters, which can be folded and opened while sailing to cut fuel consumption while reducing global carbon emissions.
Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill, said that currently the shipping industry is on the road to decarbonization. According to him, the presence of ships with minimal emissions is important for the world today as a way to tackle the risk of global warming.
“Five, six years ago, if you asked people in shipping about decarbonising, they would say it was going to be difficult and that it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. But five years from now, this is all going to change. People are starting to think that they are need to do this,” he said as quoted by Reuters, Monday (21/8/2023).
To note, Pyxis Ocean was co-developed by British company BAR Technologies, which was dropped from Sir Ben Ainslie’s 2017 America’s Cup team, a competition sometimes called Ocean Formula1. This voyage is considered to be a turning point for the maritime industry.
John Cooper, who has worked for the McLaren Formula One team, predicts that by 2025 half of newly built boats will be ordered with wind drives. According to him, this ship will be eyed by many companies because of the advantages it brings.
“The reason I’m so confident is this ship is capable of saving one and a half tonnes of fuel per day. Having four wings on board means saving six tonnes of fuel, saving 20 tonnes of CO2 – per day. That’s a huge amount,” he said.
Experts say wind power is a promising field to explore, as the shipping industry tries to reduce the roughly 837 million tons of CO2 it emits annually. In July they agreed to reduce planet-warming gases to net zero around 2050.
