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Oil at more than US$90 ($119) 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 sail.
The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela today, in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20 per cent, or US$1600, from the ship's daily fuel bill.
"We aim to prove it pays to protect the environment," Wrage said. "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.
Hermann Klein, an executive at Germanischer Lloyd classification society, said: "The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily." His organisation runs safety surveys on more than 6000 ships worldwide.
"Slowing down by 10 per cent can lead to a 25 per cent reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container line gave notice of its intention to slow down."
Shipping was excluded from the United Nations's Kyoto Protocol to slow climate change, but many nations want the industry to be made accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to Kyoto.
In Hamburg, the Hapag-Lloyd shipping company is not waiting for 2012. The company in the second half of last year cut the standard speed of its ships to 20 knots from 23 1/2 knots, and said it saved a "substantial amount" of fuel.
The calculation used in shipping is complex: longer voyages mean extra operating costs, charter costs, interest costs and other monetary losses. But Hapag-Lloyd said slowing down still paid off handsomely.
"We've saved so much fuel that we added a ship to the route and still saved costs," said Klaus Heims, press spokesman at the world's fifth-largest container shipping line.
Climate change was an additional motivating factor.
"It had the added effect of cutting carbon dioxide emissions immediately," Heims said.
Slowing down has not reduced capacity. For container ships carrying mainly consumer goods from Hamburg to ports in the Far East, the round trip at 20 knots now takes 63 days instead of 56, but to make up for this it added a vessel to the route to bring the total to nine.
Hapag-Lloyd board member Adolf Adrion said speeds are now being cut further, to 16 knots from 20, for journeys across the Atlantic: "It makes sense environmentally and economically," he said.
The world's largest container shipping operator, Danish group A.P. Moller-Maersk, is also going slower to cut emissions - although Eivind Kolding, chief executive of the group's container arm, said this would mean a delay to clients of 1 1/2 days. He added he believed that was a price customers were willing to pay for the sake of the environment.
Not only are giant ocean-going vessels slowing down, the trend is also catching on among ferry services.
Norway's Color Line ferry between Oslo and Baltic destinations said in early January it would add 30 minutes to the 20-hour trip from Oslo to Kiel.
"It's good for the environment and it's good for us economically," said Color Line spokesman Helge Otto Mathisen in Oslo.
Color Line CEO Manfred Jansen has said the company will save 1.4 million litres of fuel a year by sailing slower.
But if fuel prices keep rising, innovations like the kite powered Beluga SkySails could also pay off. German-based Beluga Shipping has already ordered two more vessels, and Wrage's company has five orders in hand.
If the maiden voyage is a success, inventor and chief executive Wrage hopes to double the size of its kites to 320sq m, and expand them again to 600sq m in 2009.
The company hopes to fit them to 1500 ships by 2015.
At Germanischer Lloyd, Klein said the classification body has urged ship owners to explore other simple ways to save fuel such as using weather forecasts to pick optimum routes for vessel performance.
"Ship efficiency' is of paramount importance considering a fuel bill for a big container ship over a 25-year lifespan adds up to nearly US$900 million," he said.
ALL ABOARD
50,000 merchant ships carry 90 per cent of traded goods from oil, gas, coal and grains to electronic goods; emit 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide each year ... That's about 5 per cent of the world's total. Their fuel costs rose by as much as 70 per cent last year.
REUTERS
