Study on the analysis of market potentials and market barriers for wind propulsion technologies for ships

Report, 2016

The study analyses wind as a renewable energy source for maritime transport and has the following objectives: the identification of barriers to the development and uptake of wind propulsion and possible actions to overcome these barriers, the estimation of the technologies’ market and emissions savings potential and the associated economic and social effects. Three key barriers have been identified: 1. (Trusted) information on the technologies. 2. Access to capital for building and testing of full scale demonstrators. 3. Incentives to reduce the ships’ CO2 emissions. Possible actions to overcome these barriers are proposed, with the development of a standardized assessment method combined with test cases as an important starting point. Power savings have been calculated for four generic propulsion technologies, six sample vessels, two speed regimes, considering AIS voyage profiles and sample routes. Rotor and wingsail show similar, substantial relative savings, the kite higher (lower) savings for smaller (larger) vessels; savings are lowest for wind turbines. With increased speed absolute savings of rotor and wingsail rise. In 2030, the market potential could amount to around 3,700–10,700 installed systems on bulkers and tankers, associated with approximately 3.5–7.5 Mt CO2 savings and 6,500–8,000 direct and 8,500–10,000 indirect jobs.