Tompkins County Relocalization Project

[Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

The movie really is starting to run backwards.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/business/2008/01/21/139969/p2/Slower%2Dboats.htm

Thanks to TCLocal member TMM for this one.

Jon

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Slower boats as ship owners try to save fuel
Monday, January 21, 2008
By Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters

BERLIN -- Oil at more than US$90 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 the sail.

The world's first commercial ship powered partly by a giant kite
sets off on a maiden voyage from Bremen to Venezuela on Tuesday,
in an experiment which inventor Stephan Wrage hopes can wipe 20
percent, or US$1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill.

"We aim to prove it pays to protect the environment," Wrage told
Reuters. "Showing that ecology and economics are not
contradictions motivates us all."

The 10,000-ton '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.

The world's 50,000 merchant ships, which carry 90 percent of
traded goods from oil, gas, coal, and grains to electronic goods,
emit 800 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

That's about 5 percent of the world's total.

Also, their fuel costs rose by as much as 70 percent last year.

That dramatic increase has ship owners clambering onto a bandwagon
to reduce speed as a way to save fuel and cut the greenhouse gases
blamed for global warming, said Hermann Klein, an executive at
Germanischer Lloyd classification society.

"The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has
been growing steadily," Klein, whose organization runs safety
surveys on more than 6,000 ships worldwide, told Reuters.

"Slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in
fuel use.

Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its
intention to slow down," he added.

Shipping was excluded from the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to slow
climate change, and many nations want the industry to be made
accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to
Kyoto, which runs to 2012.

In Hamburg, the Hapag-Lloyd shipping company is not waiting for
2012.

It reacted to rising fuel prices by cutting the throttle on its
140 container ships travelling the world's oceans, ordering its
captains to slow down.

The company in the second half of last year reduced 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. "Why didn't we do
this before?"

Climate change was an additional motivating factor.

"It had the added effect of cutting carbon dioxide emissions
immediately," Heims said. "Before, ships would speed up to 25
knots from the standard 23 1/2 to make up if time was lost in
crowded ports.

We calculated that 5 knots slower saves up to 50 percent in fuel."

Slowing down has not involved a decrease in capacity for the
company. 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 told a news conference in
London on Jan. 10 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, told the January event 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.

"We reduce speeds where it makes sense," said Thomas Grondorf,
Moller-Maersk spokesman in Copenhagen. "It entails careful
planning and is only appropriate on certain routes."

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 liters of fuel per 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 a
total of 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 320 square meters,
and expand them again to 600 square meters in 2009. The company
hopes to fit 1,500 ships by 2015.

At Germanischer Lloyd, Klein said the classification body has
urged ship owners to explore other simple ways to save fuel,
including using weather forecasts to pick optimum routes for
vessel performance, regularly cleaning their vessels' hull and
propeller to remove sediments that cause resistance, and using
fuel additives to improve combustion efficiency.

"'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.

He also saw scope for designers to create slower speed engines
with better fuel efficiency rather than just having ship owners
operate fast-propulsion engines at reduced speeds.