Wind and efficiency retrofits "need to step up"

With shipyards fully booked until several years in advance, shipowners must invest to make efficiency retrofits on existing tonnage, in the hope of bringing up their fuel efficiency in line with IMO and EU commitments, Ship Repair Newsletter heard this week.

Cristina Aleixendri Muñoz, co-founder of Spanish wind-assisted ship propulsion (WAPS) start-up bound4blue, suggested that the long year lifespan of a sail made retrofit more viable on even much older ship tonnage, with the proviso that an existing system could be reinstalled onto a different vessel at a later date.

“There is for sure the sunk cost of installations, but these systems have a life expectancy of 20-25 years, so you can move the system around,” she said.

Gavin Allwright, Secretary General of the International Wind Ship Association (IWSA), related how attitudes to wind propulsion had changed over the last decades, culminating in a pre-eminently attractive time to invest. “In the early ‘90s, there was a lot of activity. But when the price of oil dropped, wind propulsion was sidelined.”

Now there are far more drivers involved than just the “price at the pump,” he said. “We are not just going for hyper-efficiency and today's dollar, but we need to be resilient against stranded assets, changes in policy.

“We can do 2030 fairly well if we get moving… but we really need to be stepping that up.”