H2020 – EcoSail#

This project is funded by the EU H2020 program from 2018-11 until 2021-10-30. Grant no. 820589

large funding agencies supporting our research

Eco-friendly and customer-driven Sail plan optimisation service

Project objective#

The overall vision is to bring our patented EcoSail technology to full market maturation, to pilot the system and to arrive at its commercialisation as a new energy efficiency and cost-effective solution for the global maritime transport market.

Project background#

Our innovative route planning service will be a disruptive new market entry, reducing fuel consumption by at least 7%. EcoSail is rooted in the clear market-pull caused by the industry need to increase its cost efficiency and decrease environmental impacts. It is the result of several EU-funded R&D projects (SpaceNav, Navtronic & Sectronic) leading to a verified and demonstrated prototype (at TRL7) and confirming the commercial and economic viability. In these projects, the SMEs (OSM, GMS, ONL) developed a roadmap for technical improvements and a strategic business plan on entering the global maritime transport market. The EcoSail project approach is to execute these plans; technically advance EcoSail to TRL8 (WP1) and qualify the service in real-life operations to reach TRL9 (WP3). To support commercial viability, we will conduct a range of market maturation activities in WP4-5 and secure a dedicated EcoSail ‘Training Academy’ for future maritime masters, users and commercial staff (WP2). We bring together a strong consortium, the three lead SMEs with deep industry knowledge have teamed up with the world-class RTO, CHA, specialising in EO data and maritime training simulations, and a large offshore industrial target user (LAM), to successfully market launch and scale the ground-breaking EcoSail service platform. EcoSail will create a measurable consortium impact - as accumulated revenues of €87.1m for the 5-year post-project (2020-24), with accumulated gross profit of €44m and employment growth of 95 FTEs, and 80 FTEs in our value chain. Further, we will enable between €1.4bn to 2.7bn in reduced costs for our clients and decrease their CO2 emissions by 11m tonnes and their SOx emission by 0.3m tons.

Our tasks at Chalmers#

  • Develop static ship performance models for voyage optimization

  • Benchmark various voyage optimization algorithms

  • Develop training materials for the VoyOpt sail plan system

  • Validate and exploit the benefits from the VoyOpt system