Giant kites could pull ships across the ocean – and slash their carbon emissions
Giant kites could pull ships across the ocean – and slash their carbon emissions
French company Airseas has developed the Seawing, a kite to help propel cargo ships, which it says could cut their carbon emissions by an average of 20%.
I checked for posts about this and didn’t see any. Hopefully the cross post works properly.
Archive links: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hKYX9
I was wondering if there are any benefits to using a kite vs. a traditional sail, and it turns out there are:
“What differentiates it from other wind solutions,” says Bernatets, “is that the wing is not just pulled by the wind and countered by the ship.” Instead, it flies in figure-of-eight loops, which multiply the pulling effect of the airflow to give what he calls “crazy power.”
“Plus, we fetch the wind 300 meters above the sea surface, where it’s 50% more powerful,” adds Bernatets. The combination “explains why the power is tremendous for a system that is very compact, simple on the bow of the ship, and can be retrofitted on any ship, not just new ships,” he says
I’m sorry, my bullshitometer just bend the high-stop pin. Im going to need him to define crazy power - ideally not using the words shit-ton or insane in the definition.
I think he means crazy as in wacky. I had a training kite-surfing kite (I wanted to learn to kite snowboard) and if I held it still (no grip adjustments) in high winds it would start to fly in a fast figure eight like a hyperactive Chihuahua at dinner time. I think that's what he means by crazy, or at least that's how I understood it because I have the experience for context.
Jevon's paradox says this might not help. If shipping gets faster, cheaper, and cleaner, because ships get free power on top of their engines - are we likely to do less of it?
Are we likely to do less of it careening off the cliff, though? Because nothing has slowed it yet..
Besides, I feel like the maintenance and, probably, management of it would require a separate fund so it might not be cheaper for the shipper, but hopefully cheaper than the fines for not implementing it (assuming we stick with capitalism which.. meh, we shouldn’t anyway, it’s pretty exhausted at this point)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Now imagine the same concept applied to a 1,000-square-meter kite, flying 300 meters above the water – only instead of towing a surfer across the waves, it’s helping to propel a colossal cargo ship across the ocean.
That’s the basic idea behind the Seawing, a technology being developed by French company Airseas, which it says could help cargo ships reduce their fuel consumption, and cut their carbon emissions by an average of 20%.
Powered predominantly by fossil fuels, the shipping industry accounts for around 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Maritime Organization – which is why there’s an urgent need for change, says Airseas co-founder and CEO Vincent Bernatets.
Its flight is controlled by autopilot software that operates from a box beneath the kite, which is in turn attached to the ship by a 700-meter-long cable that provides power and sends data to and from the vessel.
For more than a year, a 250-square-meter version of the Seawing has been tested on a cargo ship chartered by Airbus (which owns a minority stake in Airseas), sailing across the Atlantic.
Dr. Richard Pemberton, a lecturer in Mechanical and Marine Engineering Design at the University of Plymouth, in the UK, believes that “there’s an absolutely no question that it’s technically possible” for the technology to work.He points out that German company SkySails developed and tested a similar kite-based propulsion system for ships more than a decade ago.
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This is a technology that has been on the horizon for decades, but has only ever been used on a handful of vessels.
If the benefits are as great as claimed, why isn't this the standard everywhere?
Personally I would assume because it’s a pain in the ass to maintain, when fossil fuels are less so and not presently heavily penalized.
I mean really, wind was the original seafaring option, so we already know it can be harnessed that way, but the current capitalist framework rewards doing things cheap at the expense of the planet.
Cargo ships use real bad fuels, anything would help, it just needs to be required or cheaper than polluting alternatives.
Looks like internalized costs for this rather than the externalized costs for fossil fuels. Only regulation can truly fix that.