The British company harnessing wind power to turn oil tankers green

Almost 200 years after it was eclipsed by steam, wind power is poised to stage a comeback in the global shipping industry in the form of an oil tanker fitted with 120ft sails.
The first ever modern cargo ship purpose-built to combine both diesel and wind propulsion will be launched from a shipyard in Shanghai at the end of the month.
The 115,000-tonne Brands Hatch – named after the Kent motor racing circuit – was commissioned by shipping company Union Maritime.
The British company has a total of 34 of the $70m (£53m) craft on order, marking a $2bn bet on the potential of sail to slash fuel costs and reduce carbon emissions.
The hybrid vessel will feature three rigid sails made from advanced fibreglass, a material similar to that used for wind turbines.
Known as WindWings, the $5m sails were developed by Portsmouth-based Bar Technologies and will save about 1.5 tonnes of fuel a day.
For Brands Hatch, that will amount to a daily reduction of 4.5 tonnes, equivalent to 16pc of its usual fuel consumption.
According to John Cooper, the boss of Bar Technologies, the rollout of wind-powered ships will revolutionise the tanker industry.
He says: 'It's a massive fuel saving. The numbers are so big that I think, in 18 months, half of all tankers and bulk carriers ordered will have wind propulsion.'
Bar Technologies was formed in 2017 to commercialise advances in sail technology that emerged from Sir Ben Ainslie's America's Cup exploits.
The Olympic gold medal winner holds a stake in the business, as do co-founder Martin Whitmarsh, the former McLaren Formula 1 team principal, and Carphone Warehouse billionaire Sir Charles Dunstone.
Investment has allowed the firm to hire 50 designers and technicians, including naval architects, fluid dynamists, composite specialists and data and simulation engineers.
Bar calculates customer savings from its sails by using 'hindcasting' to simulate 10 years of past wind and wave conditions. It claims this can accurately predict future performance.
The WindWings, each taller than a 10-storey building, have already completed two years of trials with two ships.
This includes the Pyxis Ocean, an 81,000-tonne bulk carrier launched in April 2023 that crossed the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, while also rounding both Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope in its first six months.
It was followed by the Berge Olympus ore carrier, a 211,000-tonne leviathan measuring 1,000ft and fitted with four sails, making it the world's most powerful sailing cargo vessel. An even larger supertanker would need five WindWings.
Both Union Maritime and Berge Bulk are now taking 20pc stakes in Bar, which Cooper claims is a significant vote of confidence in its technology.
The ships ordered by Union Maritime are classified as LR2s, the most common tankers used to carry both refined products and crude oil.
The Brands Hatch is undergoing installation of final electrical and hydraulic systems before setting out to sea 'in a matter of weeks', Mr Cooper says.
Nine more vessels equipped with WindWings sails are being built at four other Chinese shipyards, while a further two are under construction at a Hyundai yard in Vietnam.
The sails are being made by a division of state-owned conglomerate China Merchants on a production line 40 miles north of Shanghai on the Yangtze river.
All of the ships are to be named by Laurent Cadji, Union Maritime's founder, after current or former Formula 1 tracks, Mr Cooper says.
Those will include Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix; Interlagos in São Paulo, Brazil; Suzuka, Japan; Sepang, Malaysia; Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia; and Long Beach, California.
That's a happy coincidence for Cooper, who became Bar chief executive in 2019 after 15 years in financial and commercial roles at McLaren, where he recalls 'making Lewis Hamilton wash trucks in the car park before he became a star'.
As well as promising significant fuel savings, Cooper claims each WindWings sail will eliminate 14 tonnes of carbon emissions per day from the ships.
The chief executive says the beauty of the sails is that they are 'fuel agnostic' and will deliver savings regardless of what is used to power the sails when it's not windy enough.
That will be particularly pertinent should shipping make the switch to ammonia, hydrogen or methanol, which lack the energy density of fossil fuels and must be carried in bigger volumes.
He says: 'Ship owners will face not just higher fuel costs but a much bigger fuel tank, which means less cargo. But with sails, you can have both a cleaner ship and a smaller fuel tank.'
The WindWings sail features a steel mast for strength, while it is also equipped with parts to manage the wind flow and extract maximum thrust for the conditions.
Cooper says the sails act very much like aircraft wings and can operate safely in winds of up to 50 knots, above which they must be folded flat on the deck.
He says: 'We developed WindWings from real-world ocean weather, where wind isn't nice and uniform coming from one direction. There is a lot of gusting out there on the ocean.'
However, Bar isn't alone in trying to revolutionise the world of oil tankers, as other forms of sail technology have also been developed.
Those include the tube-like Flettner rotor, which rotates at 300 revolutions per minute to create a pressure differential that provides forward thrust, but requires large amounts of electricity.
Enormous kite-like sails can also work well in a wind blowing from the stern but have a limited application, while so-called blown wings suck air in at the top before being blown out.
Around 10 examples of rotor and blown-wing designs are currently in service, but Cooper claims his technology will surpass all of them.
'This puts us way out in front in the wind propulsion market,' Cooper says, adding that Bar is 'talking with several other big players' and will announce further orders soon.
Demand is expected to be bolstered by new net zero rules being rolled out by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), which will mean vessels are fined up to $380 per tonne of emissions above a certain threshold.
Bar is hopeful that this will herald a new era of sail once and for all.
Cooper says: 'The IMO has come up with a very, very stringent reduction plan which is going to really focus owners' minds.
'You've also got companies like Ikea and Amazon pressing for the vessels their goods are on to be cleaner. So we are at a real tipping point.'
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