There is a major interest within the maritime industry in reducing reliance on carbon based fuels. This interest comes from a combined force of shifting public opinion, record breaking prices of maritime fuel and changing regulation. Reducing reliance on carbon-based fuels is achieved partly through alternative energy sources (like Hydrogen or Electricity) but mainly through a collection of efficiency increasing technologies. 

In terms of Public Opinion, views have been slowly changing regarding climate change, with a recent 16% increase in interest from the public in climate change. This public opinion has led to public bodies pushing higher standards of regulation, including reports like “The Next Wave: Green Corridors” from the Getting to Zero Coalition indicating industry interest in the shift and ‘The European Emissions Trading Scheme’ putting pressure on companies to comply with greener practices. 

Combined with this increase in interest from a variety of sources, global supply chain issues and the macroeconomic environment has led to a record breaking price of maritime fuel, which means that shipping companies are looking for alternative ways of powering their ships. 

The deep dive starts with an analysis of alternative fuels, before examining the innovation that is increasing efficiency using traditional fuels.

Alternative Fuels

The most obvious way of reducing reliance on carbon fuels is with alternative fuels. The review examines Green Methanol, Hydrogen, Electricity, Hydrogen & Electricity Combinations and Wind.

Green Methanol

Green Methanol is a suitable source of fuel as it is energy dense and there is a good possibility of making it in bulk. Berlin Based startup Carbon One, for example, is producing an efficient production system for green methanol which is a cleaner source of fuel than traditional maritime fuels. Green Methanol comes from recombining CO2 (often recovered from industrial processes, or biogas plants) and hydrogen (which could be produced from electrolysis using renewable sources). In this way, the CO2 released in the burning of the fuel is already being ‘recycled’ once before being released into the atmosphere.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen also potentially fits the bill as a good maritime fuel alternative. While there are no startups building hydrogen powered ships that we identified, there is certainly the possibility in the future. There are multiple examples of proofs of concept.  For example, Bill Gates’ superyacht is already using Hydrogen technology to provide power. Furthermore, there are companies like Acua Ocean that are building smaller specialist vessels that are powered by Hydrogen. 

Electricity

The lead candidate for a carbon fuel alternative on land has turned out to be electricity, however, electricity is better suited for land based vehicles than large ships. Ships have a dual issue of battery technology limitations and infrastructure. Battery cells are expensive to produce, and given the demand, would be extremely expensive in the size required for a full sized ship. Secondly, there are still limitations in energy density – meaning that the battery would have to be both enormous and heavy for a full sized ship to make the journeys normally required of ships. In terms of infrastructure, almost all ports at the moment would lack the ‘supercharging’ ability to recharge a ship in a realistic amount of time. As well as all this, there are significant hurdles in ensuring battery cells are not dangerous in the case of hull damage. 

Despite these commonly discussed issues, FleetZero is building a fleet of electric shipping vessels. Their website argues that their battery design has sufficient energy density and safety protections to overcome the above hurdles. While Fleet Zero may be successful, It is probably more likely that pleasure crafts offer electric powering technology before the shipping industry adopts it en masse. X Shore, for example, has recently received a cash injection to expand their line of electric pleasure boats. Rhode-Island based FluxMarine is also making an electric outbound engine to compete with the classic petrol powered outboards. Both of these offerings still contain a ‘green premium’, meaning that consumers pay more for the electric alternative than the equivalent traditionally powered engine. For example, a 15 horsepower petrol engine might cost about $3000 from a brand like Honda or Yamaha, while Flux Marine’s cheapest 15hp offering is $7,500. 

Hydrogen & Electricity Combinations

There are also startups looking to combine various alternative fuel technologies. E1 Marine, for example, offers hydrogen products that combine various fuel alternatives. They generate hydrogen onboard from methanol, in order to drive electric engines. Using Methanol in this manner reduces the emissions associated with the fuel, but also limits the necessity to store and handle Hydrogen, which is expensive and potentially dangerous. 

Wind

Neoline is using a more traditional powering source, aiming to operate a fleet of cargo ships that are powered by wind via a sail. While wind power as a primary power source has not been a major source of innovation in the cohort of startups, adding wind as a secondary power source is extremely common. SkySails Marine Performance offer a kite based system, Econowind offer a retrofit sail like solution and BAR Technologies fit sail like structures to container ships – all of which look to increase speed using wind power to reduce carbon based fuels. Both Norsepower and Magnuss are also looking to use wind, but instead relying on Flettner rotors to increase speed. These rotors are tall, cylindrical columns that rotate around their vertical axis, using the Magnus effect to generate lift, which translates into forward thrust for the ship. The Magnus effect is a phenomenon in which a spinning object moving through a fluid (such as air) generates a force perpendicular to its direction of motion due to the pressure difference created by the spinning motion. In the case of Flettner rotors, as the rotor spins, it causes the air to flow faster on one side and slower on the other, creating a pressure difference that results in lift or thrust. Therefore, it seems that ship owners might have a choice of wind assisted technology.

Optimisation of Hulls & Journey Planning 

Friction Reduction

As well as creating thrust in novel ways, other companies are looking for advanced ways to reduce friction on the vessels. This is mainly either the adding of a specialist material to the hulls, like MPS (Marine Performance Systems), which can retrofit ship hulls in order to generate reductions in fuel requirements or through a company like HullWiper, which uses underwater, remote controlled pressure jets to clean hulls. Advancements in hull material technology could lead to major improvements. We can see the potential increase in efficiency by studying the efficiency of Shark skin. The shark skin’s structure, as well as reducing barnacle build up, produces small amounts of turbulence, which actually reduces drag compared to a ship’s smooth hull. Therefore, Shark’s skin has about a 10% reduction in friction compared to a smooth skin, which would amount to a sizeable saving for ships if startups could replicate that efficiency.

Voyage Planning

While these alternative energy sources are fascinating, the largest cohort looking to improve efficiency is software based interventions which look to increase efficiency en route. For example:

• Slow Steaming: Reducing the speed of ships can significantly decrease fuel consumption and emissions. This practice requires a trade-off between transit time and environmental impact, but companies like Wärtsilä offer platforms that track the docking availability at the incoming port – so that you only arrive when you can dock. Similarly, Intelligent Cargo Systems is able to use their system that monitors port productivity to anticipate delays, which allows ships to slow down, or anticipate earlier departures, which allows them to leave earlier. 
• Weather Avoidance: Avoiding bad weather can increase efficiency, and tracking tailwinds can increase speed. Aquaplot, for example, offers a flexible solution which allows mariners to plot a route while avoiding heavy weather, while reducing total journey time. Ocean Route also offers a solution which focuses just on increasing efficiencies through careful monitoring and avoidance of heavy weather. 
• Route Planning: Whether it’s taking an optimised route in terms of distance traveled, or around issues with congestion like a specifical canal or bridge route. SeaRoutes, for example, helps mariners calculate the shortest route considering traffic separation schemes, SECA/ECA zones, piracy zones, canals and port entries.

Decision Making Technologies

Another group of companies, are focussed on monitoring and centralising information to help make better decisions about routes and fuel efficiency  – whether that’s to help shipping companies comply with regulations, or leverage the data to find operational efficiencies. In terms of companies that offer monitoring devices with technology, Marfle uses a connected device to monitor emissions of smaller vessels like specialist boats and pilot boats. This allows operators to monitor which activities are the most fuel & emission intensive and to monitor if an engine might need maintenance ahead of time. VesOps similarly monitors carbon emissions for smaller vessels like specialist or pilot vessels. The startup Onboard has also integrated emission monitoring into its onboard device which integrates the emissions data with many other streams of data. There are also companies like Spinergie, who combine pre-existing streams of data in order to produce carbon emission reports, which can be used for operational changes to reduce emissions. For example, using Spinergie’s fuel consumption model, one can determine the speed threshold at which fuel consumption significantly increases. In one case, it was found that a difference of just one knot in speed increased fuel consumption by 40%. By understanding this, managers can make adjustments to reduce unnecessary fuel consumption and optimize efficiency.

Reductions and optimisations in speed can be integrated into the design of the ship controls too. For example, SmartShip provides force-feedback control levers for the maritime industry. Their levers are designed to bridge the gap in information transfer, which means they can give feedback to the operator to direct them to the optimum use of throttle to, for example, reduce emissions during a voyage. In simple terms, the throttle pushes back against the operator to help ‘guide’ the operator to the correct use of throttle. 

Conclusion

All together, the innovations from the startup ecosystem in the maritime sector, reflects the interest of public opinion, as well as requirements laid down by the heightened regulation and increases in fuel costs. Fuel efficiency and alternative fuels are going to be a major part of the total innovation in the maritime sector over the next ten years.