This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 20, 2023 - February 26, 2023

From afar, the Energy Observer docked at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club looks like any other twin-hulled sailing boat. The vertical wind turbines — dubbed Oceanwings — on its sails and solar sheets covering almost every square inch of the boat’s surface, however, would not look out of place in the pages of a science fiction book.

The 100ft-long, repurposed racing catamaran — retrofitted with a living space, innovative technology and massive hydrogen tanks — is an experimental vessel that has set sail around the world powered entirely by the sun, sea and wind.

Its purpose? To show that a feasible and highly effective carbon-free energy system works in extreme conditions and can be scaled up whether on sea or land, with some ingenuity.

For starters, the team behind the development of the Energy Observer hopes to convert the shipping industry, which was responsible for nearly 90% of the world’s trade and, consequently, about 2.89% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2018. This may grow by 130% in 2050 from 2008 levels, according to the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

By the IMO’s estimates, that amount of GHG produced by the global shipping industry would rank sixth in the world for its contributions to climate change if it were a country.

Being largely dependent on bunker crude — a sulphur-rich heavy oil that produces noxious gases when burned — the pressure on the industry to reduce its carbon footprint is mounting.

“The goal of this project is really just to promote the different renewable energy solutions and to start conversations about how we could do things differently,” says Dr Katia Nicolet, a scientist aboard Energy Observer and doctor in marine biology, who spoke to ESG during the vessel’s 74th stopover in Langkawi last October.

The Energy Observer is the world’s first catamaran outfitted with cutting-edge zero-emission technology and sailing on hydrogen energy. The hydrogen is produced by the electrolysis of seawater through fuel cells powered by bi-facial solar panels and managed by a control system comprising over 1,500 sensors.

“We create electricity from the solar panels and the electricity goes into the batteries. When the fuel cells are full, the power is used to create hydrogen. Water is pumped from the ocean, desalinated and purified through reverse osmosis to produce water. Water is electrolysed and oxygen is released. The hydrogen is compressed to 350 bars and stored in tanks that look like big diving tanks,” says Nicolet.

The hydrogen produced can power the vessel for about five days, if the Energy Observer sails at five knots on a calm sea with little wind and waves.

“This is how we reach energy autonomy, with the help of hydrogen. We can go around the world like this indefinitely because we can generate all the energy that we need and save enough of it for long crossings,” Nicolet adds.

The unique boat — which doubles as a laboratory — is the brainchild of French mariner and racing enthusiast Victorien Erussard, who embarked on the mission to develop the zero-emission solution when he was stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after the diesel generator of his racing catamaran broke down during a race in 2013.

After four years of research and development into intelligent energy solutions and €6 million in funding, the Energy Observer was put in the water in Saint-Malo to circumnavigate France in 2017. Its crew set sail to the Mediterranean seas and Europe in the next couple of years, with the team continuously pushing the limits of its self-sufficient technology in unpredictable weather conditions, says Nicolet.

For example, the initial so­lar panels were changed to second-generation panels, specifically designed for the vessel to allow the crew to walk on them. “When the boat was first designed, the technology was not quite there yet. So now, we are on the second-generation solar panels and they’re working really well. This is one example where we fed our experience with the technologies back to the industry, and they changed them for the new generation of solar cells for the boat.

“We had a similar situation recently with the wings and fuel cells. We’ve been pushing them up to like 30 knots of winds — typically the conditions that we cannot recreate in the lab — and so improvements were made to them during dry dock,” says Nicolet.

To keep its energy consumption sustainable, the vessel is mostly sailing in a hybrid mode, generating about half its power from the engines and half from the wind, she adds.

Below deck, there are six cabins (or coffins, as Nicolet calls them), a lounge area and workspace, a kitchen and a section devoted to a computer keeping tabs on power consumed, including the amount the crew of six uses to cook, for the dishwasher and even to brew coffee.

These data are fed back to headquarters in real time, including the amount of energy used for life on board and propulsion.

This is necessary work to make clean energy a practical reality that is accessible to all, says Nicolet.

“This boat was developed at a very high cost because everything was tailor-made for this vessel. But the idea, really, is not to recreate the same ship because that would be impractical. Instead, it is a showcase of different solutions that could be implemented.”

Even though hydrogen energy is touted as the energy of the future, there are still concerns over the safety of transporting the highly flammable fuel. In 2017, 44 crew members died after a hydrogen explosion destroyed the Argentine navy submarine, ARA San Juan.

To that, Nicolet says, “It is admittedly a very explosive gas. But hydrogen has been used in space rockets for the last 20 years. Now we have the technology to fill tanks, compress the gas, store it and then use it again and again, completely safely.

“We have been in storms and violent sea conditions such as 5m-high waves, making it hard to even walk. The hydrogen tanks stayed put, unlike batteries that can sometimes overheat, which is not a problem with hydrogen. And hydrogen can be stored for much longer than batteries. Over time, batteries lose the stored energy, but that will not happen with hydrogen.”

The tanks on board the Energy Observer store 62kg of hydrogen, which is enough to supply 1MWh of electricity. This is equivalent to the average electricity consumption of a four-person household for a month.

Another downside is that even though liquid hydrogen is lighter than bunker fuel, it needs a little bit more volume than fuel.

“To produce the same energy, it would take 1.7 times more space but it would be lighter. So, if hydrogen is used as fuel on big cargo ships, the space has to be redesigned.

“On the plus side, however, it would be a massive improvement in reducing not just carbon emissions but also sound pollution in the ocean. A regular ferry, for example, can be heard louder and deeper in the ocean because sound travels four times faster in the ocean than in the air. For marine mammals that use twice the number of neurons that we use for hearing, hydrogen-powered electrical vessels would be great as they are a lot more silent,” says Nicolet.

The Energy Observer, which has left Malaysia for India, will go on to Seychelles, South Africa, Brazil and New York and end its world tour in Paris just in time for the Olympic Games in 2024.

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