Breathing new life into the sails of shipping, literally!

The Minnesota based agricultural and commodities giant Cargill is looking to save some money on its shipping operations by installing kites on the bows of ships to help produce propulsion. This new take on wind powered shipping is pioneered by a German company called SkySails. This impressive new technology is aimed at reducing fuel consumption and providing greener shipping for years to come. These kites, measuring in at a massive 320 square meters, will reduce fuel consumption by upwards of 35%, resulting in a savings on about ten tons of fuel a day. Very impressive!

SkySails technology has yet to be deployed on large shipping vessels, but the proposed system should be hitting the high seas by 2012. These kites will be flown from the bow of the ships at heights of 100-400+ meters and are controlled by computers, in order to maximize output. The UN predicts that if technology like this was adopted on a large scale by global shipping, that there could be a 100 million tons of CO2 emissions saved annually! Plus that will equal money in the bank for shippers since they won't be, literally, pouring as much money into their massive fuel tanks.

Wind powered ships are obviously no new thing, but this latest spin on the age old classic has a lot of people excited. Some smaller iterations of this idea have been used to pull smaller boats like kayaks and row boats for years. You can even pick up a kite for use in your kayak or canoe online for next to nothing!! I have even seen this idea applied to mountain boarding and skiing, using traction kites for propulsion. SkySails, itself, has been selling kites for yachts and other pleasure boats for years. To see Cargill and SkySails ambitious plans really does breath new hope and life into the future of global shipping! To find out more check out the Treehugger article here, and talk about carbon neutral shipping here.