FastRig: Decarbonising Biomass Transport with Wind Innovation

Hannah: From Argus Media, this is the biomass podcast. focusing on all discussions that affect the biomass industry. I am your host, Hannah Adler, senior reporter on the Biomass desk for Argus Media. Today, I am with Di Gilpin, founder and CEO at Smart Green Shipping. Thank you so much for joining today, Di. 

Di: Hannah, thank you so much for inviting me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. 

Hannah: So, you have just launched the Sea Trials Report. Very exciting. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and what that's shown? 

Di: We've been working on the development of retrofitable wingsails for global shipping since 2014. And we were fortunate enough in 2022 to win funding from the UK government. And we've been supported by Drax in delivering the design and the build, the testing, and the onboard installation of the FastRig wingsail so that we could validate the performance both in terms of the technical installation and the fuel saving that we can derive from a wingsail. So that report's just about to be launched. And we're really excited about the opportunities that we've got for this technology in global shipping and specifically in the biomass space with the support of Drax. 

Hannah: Nice. So, I've just realized, just for those who aren't aware, can you quickly just go through what is the FastRig? What is it? 

Di: So basically, if you think of an aircraft wing, it's like one of those, only it's upright and it's on a ship. And if you think about ships with sails, we don't want to be thinking about ships from the 20th century or the 18th century. This is a modern aerofoil, if you like. It's automated. It's incredibly lightweight. It's easy to install. It's easy to retrofit. And it's automated. It knows which way the wind's coming from, and it will feather itself according to the sensors that are on it, which say which way the wind's coming from and what speed it is. And so, it will do that. 

If it's too high a wind or if you need to get into port, it will retract, lie down on deck, and bestowed. If the wind's too low, it will get out of the way because otherwise it will create extra resistance. It works in conjunction with your existing engine and has a very low footprint on the deck. It's there to support a transition to low-carbon transport, low-carbon logistics in shipping. 

Hannah: Which ships do you envisage them being on? Is it specific types of ships, or? 

Di: There are about 60,000 ships in the global fleet. And I would never say never, because I come from an innovation background, but container ships look difficult. Short sea shipping, perhaps not quite so good for us, because you need a good long run to get the wind to give you the power that you need. But we think bulk carriers and tankers are the most suitable candidates for this technology in the early stages of its development. But there are 40,000 of those ships in the world, and quite a lot of them are carrying biomass, quite a lot of the bulkers are carrying biomass. We think there's a significant opportunity to support global shipping's decarbonization using wind-assisted technology. 

Hannah: You mentioned biomass ships transporting biomass. So far, as I'm aware, you've only tested on nuclear transport solutions. Is that correct? 

Di: The ship that we did our sea trials on was called the Pacific Grebe, and she's owned by Nuclear Transport Solutions. The funding that we won was from the British government, and we had to use the UK flagship to demonstrate our UK-built technology. There aren't very many of those around. She was a very useful ship for us to be able to charter, partly because there are other wind-assist devices in the market. They haven't been able to charter their own ship specifically, so they haven't been able to conduct scientific sea trials in the way that we have, which gives us a better validation of the fuel-saving performance. 

But also, it gave us the opportunity to show that we can install the very technically challenging ships, run sea trials, and then de-install it in a very short amount of time. And there's a key reason for why that's important, which we might talk about in terms of the way that the market's set up, the way the shipping market's set up. But being easy to install and being easy to take off means that it gives much greater flexibility to the shipping sector. It has only been the Grebe, but we are now working on how do we scale up that technology for larger vessels? And those are primarily in our sites now, our biomass vessels, or vessels that are carrying biomass, I should say. 

Hannah: Are there any financial incentives or frameworks that have supported the adoption of this technology? 

Di: So that's an interesting question because the whole of global shipping is a very challenging market to regulate because it's international. There are different countries across the world. We have different philosophies, different approaches. And the UN body, the International Maritime Organization's job has been to try and bring all those different countries. Some of them are producing fossil fuel, some of them are small island developing countries, and they're at risk at sea level. How do you bring that disparate group of people to a consensus? And that's been a long and torturous process. 

But in the last two months, middle of April, the IMO agreed a groundbreaking commitment to reduce emissions in the very near future. Reducing it by 20% by 2028, I think it is, off the top of my head, and then by 30% by 2030. So that is very near-term. That's very useful to us because there's very little other opportunity to decarbonize at that rate close to market. But at the same time, the EU have a regulation called FuelEU, and they have a trading scheme, which is EU ETS, which we know all about. Shipping is included in EU ETS, but it's also got a specific mechanism which incentivizes the use of wind on ships that are working in European ports. It's taken a while, but we are now seeing regulation, sort of polluter pays regulations, coming into force. And that is seeing a significant uplift in interest in our technology. 

Hannah: That's great. You've got all these different countries with all these different philosophies bringing it all together. How do you see this wind-assisted sort of propulsion evolving in the industry over the next decades? 

Di: Shipping calls itself conservative, but I concern myself with that's just a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're all conservative to some extent. None of us really want to be the first to do, well, no, maybe some people do, but not very many people want to be the first person to put a solar panel on their roof, try an EV. So there's a process that innovation needs to go through to give the market confidence in the technology and the robustness and the safety of the technology in the performance that we're claiming that it can deliver, and then in what the commercial, what the economic implications, what the business case looks like. And so that's what the sea trials has enabled us to do is to overcome those initial concerns in the market. 

I think it'd be fair to say that the industry is now accepting that wind assist is a viable option. But there are still commercial barriers to overcome, which is if you install wind on a ship, which is effectively operated like a taxi, who owns the benefit of that capital-intensive technology installation? So if I could speak specifically to the kind of conversations we've been having with Drax, who have been an investor and a sponsor of Smart Green Shipping, they would like to buy our technology or low-carbon technology in their supply chain, because using renewables is a sensible thing to do, and the ship owners want to provide that service. 

But the ship owners have a responsibility to deliver a consignment of cargo for Drax from one port to another. But then that consignment has been delivered, where does the ship go next? It doesn't necessarily go back empty to just go because that would be inefficient. So where does it go next? It might go to Rotterdam, it might pick up grain in Rotterdam, or something completely different on a different cargo. But the ship that's fitted with our technology is now going out of position, and when Drax need their next consignment, that ship may not be back to pick up the next consignment of biomass. So how do we deal with that conundrum? And that's where we're at at the moment. Those are the problems, the challenges that we're playing with now. 

What's interesting about this segment, about biomass particularly, is there is a very progressive mindset. In some other areas, it's been, "Well, we can't do that. It's too difficult. Go away." But there is a willingness to find a way through this commercial conundrum. How do we deal with this? And I think that potentially could be because, in the renewable energy industry, we have seen commercial mechanisms that have enabled virtual trading-type, virtual delivery-type systems to be agreed contractually. And that's really what we need to be thinking about now as a collaboration of willing partners that want to make this happen. 

Hannah: And that's already quite an established system within the renewable space as well. So yeah. 

Di: How do you take that learning and that knowledge that was developed in one renewable space and put it into another one, where there are specific challenges with it? International regulations are somewhat different, but there's also regional regulations. It's a complicated commercial arena, but none of it is insurmountable. It just takes people's willingness to sit around a table and puzzle out a solution. And I find that quite fun. And I think it is fair to say that most of the people that we work with enjoy the challenge and come willingly to the conversation because they can see it's not that far away, and there are reduced costs. You just use less fuel, and it's clean, and you're compliant. there's a goal.

Hannah: Yeah, it's a win, win. There's a win for you, a win for the ships, a win for the planet. You just mentioned costs. What is sort of the cost of installing and maintaining the FastRig on a biomass vessel? And then how does that compare to the potential savings in fuel costs? 

Di: And that's an interesting question. That's what the Sea Trials Report is going to help us unpack, because it depends on the ship, depends on how many rigs you have, depends on how fast you go. There are multiple variables. But what we can recognize is that we need a formal number. And there isn't one number. We can't say it's going to be...that it will be 17% every day, but we can guarantee, or we can use our fuel-saving analysis tools to say that we could pay back within 5 years. We can't find a case where there wouldn't be a payback within five years. 

But equally, we recognize from having great conversations with ship owners that Drax have introduced us to that that might be an obstacle. We're looking at, how do we lease finance this stuff? Because that, again, is a renewable solution. We've looked at how you can lease finance solar panels. You can arrange lease finance for wind turbines. We've got to have a great deal of confidence in the performance, the fuel-saving performance, the prediction tools for that, which is what the Sea Trials Report has really given us. If there's an effective payback period, there are financiers from the renewable space who are willing to take that on, and then the ship owners pay on a lease contract basis. 

Hannah: In terms of the expected emission reductions, is that also in the Sea Trials? 

Di: It is, yes. It’s a bit like if you're driving a petrol-driven car, the faster you go, the more fuel you consume. If you drive a ship fast, the more fuel you consume. But if your ship goes faster, you will save less fuel. You will just burn more fuel, so the wind will have less impact. If you go slower, then the wind has a greater ability to provide more fuel savings because it creates more proportional thrust. It depends on the number of wings you've got on your ship, the speed you're traveling at, and the size of the ship. Depends on the other weather conditions that are around. Is it choppy? Are you having to push the engine through? So, lots and lots of variables. 

Historically, that is the skill set of a seafarer. They understand how to operate the asset to the optimum performance. But we are seeing, not only in wind assist, but across the whole of the operational window, how digital systems can improve that performance. So how do we integrate weather forecast into that? You might say, "Well, I need to deliver my Drax cargo on Wednesday, and it isn't windy today, but I know it's going to be windy tomorrow. I can set up my..." kind of, if you like, it's like a GPS system, "I can set that up to go... I can go the same speed tomorrow, but I get more power from the wind, so I'll go a bit faster." You can play tunes with the software development that we're building and creating to support the hardware. 

Hannah: How does FastRig perform in different weather conditions? Are there certain conditions where you would say, "Don't even bother putting it up," or is it indestructible? 

Di: It's pretty indestructible. It must be certified by the classification authorities. You can't just put it on something and go to sea. We have rigorous testing, and that's part of what we've been doing. How does the metal stand up to different wind? How does the hydraulics....? All of that is tested to the nth degree. 

However, operationally, so the wing, maybe I didn't even say this before, but the wing stows. If you don't need it, it lies down on the deck. If you are operating in very, very high winds, you don't want to have the rig there, because it might make you feel unsafe as a seafarer, and we completely respect that. Now, it's certified to go at high wind speeds, but you might want to get it out of the way just to feel more comfortable. 

If the wind speeds are very low, you might want to take it out of the way, if you can't feather it in time, so that you're not creating more windage and not creating more resistance that the engine must push the ship through. But it's certified up to 35 knots of wind by Lloyd's Register now, but it's early days. 

As the technology develops, our technology, other wind-assisted technologies develop, we believe that we will understand more about a wider operating window. But even in those conditions, you can see fuel savings of up to 40% per annum. So that's a significant amount. 

The Sea Trials Report that we're launching really has looked at the digital twin models that we've been developing, numerical modelling tools that we've created, and we tested them in the real world. And that's one of the key purposes of the sea trials was to say, "This is what we predicted by modelling the ships in a computer suite. This is what it did in the real world, and it's very close." Therefore, we can take that prediction modelling and take that into... We can be confidently predicting that if we put in a different ship with a different number of rigs, the outputs will be trustworthy. 

In the first study we did, which was with Drax and Ultrabulk back in 2018 and '19, which was all done virtually, all done in an electronic digital suite, we put six rigs on one of their Kamsarmax vessels. Again, just to emphasize, this was in a model. And we ran that through our prediction tools. And you could see that there were days in October when you didn't need to use the engine at all with six rigs on it. 

Now, that's unlikely that that would happen very often, but there are days when there's enough good weather in the right direction for the ship not to use its engines. Now, it's unlikely that I'd say we would ever offer that. But there are other days in July where there's no weather at all. And so, you've got to use your engine to be able to hit your schedules. And that's the beauty of big data, big science, academia, coming together with hard-end engineering to figure out what the ship owner wants. 

That's where we've been very fortunate to have Drax and other ship owners come to us and say, "This is what we need you to be able to do. You don't want to be doing that. That's mad." So it really does help to have that collaboration across ship owners and cargo owners to understand what the commercial requirements are. In short, we'd be imagining you'd be saving about a quarter of your fuel bill on average. 

Hannah: Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, so when do you expect to make the first commercial installation? And also, what industry are you looking to do that in? 

Di: Well, so, as I mentioned, we've been working with Drax for several years on this project for now. We are looking to biomass as our first installation because, as I said earlier, there's a willingness in this industry to be open-minded about being first movers and being courageous. But we are anticipating that we will be making a full commercial installation in 2026. And that's what we're working towards now. 

But I would say that, you know, biomass ships or ships that are carrying biomass also carry other things. So there's a whole industry. There are about 60,000 ships in the global fleet, and the Department for Transport in the UK estimates that 40,000 of those could be suitable for wind assist, up to 40,000. So those ships are bulkers and tankers. And as we touched on earlier, people are quite reluctant, human beings are reluctant to be first movers, and that's perfectly understandable. 

So, if we can work with the biomass sector who are a bit more progressive than perhaps some of the other sectors, then that will have a multiplier effect. That technology will be... And we see this with all sorts of innovation all the time. It starts with...someone's an early adopter, and they go, "Oh, gosh, that's quite good," and then other people follow. 

We anticipate that that's what would happen once we've got the first commercial installation and people see that it works and, you know, that we've got the operation and maintenance schedules sorted out, all of the things that a responsible ship owner needs us to do as a responsible company, all of that sorted out, everything works. What doesn't work is sorted out quickly. Then you build market confidence. And that's why this sector has an important role in helping to be this multiplier. It's decarbonizing energy, but then it can help decarbonize global shipping because it proves the technology in this space. 

Hannah: Yeah, for sure. It'll be like a domino's effect almost. 

Di: Completely. Absolutely that. And I think that's, you know, as an underestimated and sort of... Maybe some clever academics could calculate it, but it's kind of incalculable in some respects. Yeah. You don't know which part of that would incentivize someone else to do it, but people just want to see it working, and they don't want to be the first person to make the first step. 

Hannah: Well hopefully, the Sea Trials Report will sort of show what's what and what we could expect going forward. 

Di: One of the things that's been helpful about work, because with the Sea Trials, we've worked with MOL, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, on this, and we've been able to look at some of their Handymax vessels, which have got cranes on them. And there's been this kind of prevailing narrative in the industry, which is we can't put wind on ships which have got cranes on them which are geared. 

We built a model ship, we put it in a wind tunnel, and we tested what would happen if we blew the wind from this angle and this angle and this angle and speeds, and it makes precious little difference. So it's kind of counterintuitive, but science has shown, and we've got that in the Sea Trials. Science has shown that you can measure the interaction between other on-deck equipment and wingsails with each other as well. So it is possible, doable to be able to measure in a virtual world what happens in the real world. And the Sea Trials Report has demonstrated that digital modelling is reflective of what really happens. 

Hannah: It's all very exciting. I think we're going to have to wrap up. We're kind of coming to an end here. But thank you so much for coming on, Di. It was so, so great to talk to you. 

Di: Hannah, thank you. I love talking about this. I'm sorry we've come to the end because there's loads more I could say. But thank you so much for inviting me. 

Hannah: Stay tuned for the next edition of the Argus biomass podcast. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about this topic and other factors driving the biomass industry, follow all our coverage in the Argus Biomass Markets report and visit us at argusmedia.com.