Energy company sails into view with sustainable cargo ship

B9 Energy, the largest independent operator of wind farms in the UK, is set to launch a fossil fuel free cargo ship in 2012. Its innovation, which will target the UK's growing biomass import business, was being recognised last night at a Downing Street reception with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

World shipping accounts for four per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and low carbon shipping is now high on the agenda. A new research project to limit the environmental impact of carbon emissions from the world’s shipping systems has just been announced, ahead of next week’s climate summit in Copenhagen, where the industry will be forced to make significant carbon reductions or face financial penalty.

Northern Ireland-based B9 Energy, through its B9 Shipping subsidiary, is aiming to address the emissions reduction targets the shipping industry is preparing for and is currently the only company in the world building eco-friendly cargo ships.

The 3,000 tonnes dead weight vessels, 100 metres in length with steel hulls and masts, run off 60 per cent thrust from soft sails with zero carbon emissions. The remaining 40 per cent comes from organic energy-sourced biogas powered engines, from project partner Rolls Royce, which have a carbon neutral performance.

The B9 vessels are also constructed sustainably through another project partner, steel manufacuturer, Corus. Corus is creating the vessel’s steel plates from recycled steel, melted down by the heat from torrified wood, which releases virtually no fossil carbon into the atmosphere.

The company says the sailing vessels will be commercially competitive with conventional oil powered vessels, operating to reliable schedules and offering attractive freight rates.

David Surplus, managing director of B9 Shipping and chairman of B9 Energy Group says that the company has had the idea of eco shipping vessels for over 12 years, but has only now found the right target market for its ships – the growing biomass market.

“We needed to have a niche market to trade in. Biomass is going to be very big in the UK with 30 million tonnes a year being imported," he said.

B9 says its boats have an economic range of 1,000 miles, they are looking to import from the saw mill industry and pulp mills in the Baltic States. Latvia, in particular, has a strong wood, sustainability criteria and will be exporting off cuts from their wood manufacturing industry.

“We have no contracts yet, but we are talking to both the consumers and producers – MGT Power and Drax Power – but this is still very early days and we have a long drawn out process in front of us.

"We are using the biomass plants timetables as ours, so we have to be in the water ready to transport by 2012, in construction by 2011, and sorting design and finance in 2010.”

Initially, B9 expects the ship manufacturing will be done in the north east of England, and when the technology is honed, moved to developing countries.

Surplus explains: “We are going to need hundreds of these vessels, as there is 100,000 of them around the world and they could all be sustainable, so the potential is enormous. When the carbon footprint of our vessels are inputted into The Environment Agency’s Biomass Environmental Assessment Tool (BEAT2), which assesses the likely environmental impact of a biomass energy project, compared to the CO2 output of standard vessels, the results are transformed massively in our favour – there is no better sustainable shipping technology than ours.”

The new low carbon shipping research project, ‘Low Carbon Shipping – A Systems Approach’  has received £1.7 million funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of the £530 million Research Councils UK investment in research into low-carbon technologies.