dubbed the tesla of the seas this fully
electrified fully autonomous cargo ship
is already making waves how does it work
where will it sail and why is it already
helping save lives inland join us today
for a sneak peek inside the world's
first zero emission cargo ship
at first sight norwegian container ship
the yara birkeland looks like a
potential game changer in the battle
against carbon emissions ocean-going
freight presently emits about a billion
tonnes of co2 a year more than all but
the five biggest nation states if at
least some of that traffic could be
electrified the theory goes the world
might breathe a little easier yara
birkeland was developed as a joint
venture between norwegian fertilizer
giant yara international and kongsberg
group an engineering firm specializing
in civilian and military guidance
systems the hull was launched from vard
breiler shipyard in romania in february
2020 and shipped up to norway's vard
brevik shipyard to be fitted out with
her futuristic innards she's not quite
the first autonomous ship to be clear a
finnish car ferry launched in 2018
claims that accolade but yara birkeland
is a zero emission commercial vessel and
the juice to fire up her gigantic seven
megawatt-hour battery supplied by swiss
technology firm la clanchet will come
piped in from the norwegian grid which
derives most of its energy from clean
hydroelectric plants the ship's on-board
battery by the way holds 1 000 times the
capacity of a domestic electric vehicle
so what will she actually be carrying a
little over 100 containers which isn't
much in the scheme of things the biggest
ships presently haul 24 000 at around 20
knots in speed twice as fast as yara
birkeland but as a proof of concept yara
birkeland isn't a bad start yara
international commissioned the vessel to
run between three ports in southern
norway haraja brevik and lavik shipping
raw materials and finished fertilizers
that are presently transported over land
moving this same freight by road the
company says currently necessitates 40
000 fully laden truck journeys a year
the yara birkeland will eliminate all
those emissions and tiresome refuelling
stops at a stroke in turn making local
roads quieter and safer for norwegian
citizens her maximum voyage length for
now between haroya and larvik is only
about 30 nautical miles she'll run on
two rotatable azipul pods each producing
900 kilowatts of power and a pair of
electric tunnel thrusters each producing
700 kilowatts the yara birkeland is able
to sense what's around on norway's
hectic waterways through a complex suite
of radar lidar nautical ais that's
automatic identification system regular
cameras and infrared cameras that work
at night the vessel will never stray
further than 12 nautical miles from the
coast
three separate operational hubs will be
on hand if needed to cope with any
crises and offer periodic surveillance
maritime experts tend to agree that
autonomous ocean-going vessels are
perfectly feasible with existing
technology but the issues that could
arise if a fault occurred far out to sea
could be prohibitively expensive not to
mention unacceptably dangerous for now
at least yara international's aspiration
was to launch the ship last year until
the pandemic delayed things by a few
months the ultimate dream is to make not
only the sailing but loading and
unloading at each end autonomous for now
that's still on the drawing board and
handled by human operated cranes the
regulatory and oversight framework
required for such tricky maneuvering in
all weathers is evolving as we speak
will all container vessels be autonomous
and electric soon it's hard to say if
the yara birkeland is a success when it
finally ditches its human safety crew
hopefully this winter it's certain other
companies with similarly limited
near-shore use cases will look into the
technology navigating busy larger
international ports with their own
complex legal and regulatory ecosystems
will be an altogether greater challenge
than poodling about the pretty fjords of
scandinavia but for now the yara
birkeland is on track to slash yara
international's operating costs by up to
90
that's despite the ship costing around
25 million dollars three times as much
as a normal container ship of comparable
size improvements in battery technology
will inevitably make the bigger shipping
companies sit up and take notice but a
few good years of accident-free
autonomous shipping will be needed
before this technology is more trusted
and as for the emission-free aspect well
sailing ships have been doing that for
centuries right what do you think does
electrification on such a modest scale
count for much let us know in the
comments and don't forget to subscribe
for more naval gazing tech content