The French Directorate General for Maritime Affairs, Fisheries, and Aquaculture (DGAMPA) has decided to award Michelin a contract for the first commercial use of a new "wingsail" to be deployed on an upcoming patrol boat.
"The WISAMO wingsail, with a surface area of 170 m², will provide additional wind-assisted propulsion to complement the hybrid diesel-electric system," claims Michelin.
"A fuel consumption reduction of approximately 15 per cent is expected through optimisations of the design and the vessel’s operational profile.
"These unique features have made it possible to meet the DGMPA's expectations in terms of environmental performance without impacting the ship's operations and without limiting its intervention capabilities."
In the coming years, Michelin said it aims to develop a broad range of wingsails to support the decarbonisation of all types of ships, including sizeable vessels up to 60 metres in length.
Over the last four decades or so, Baird Maritime has seen many similar proposals fail dramatically, with technology characterised by complexity, expense and almost total lack of result.
Real-world conditions are rarely appropriate, and when they are, the technology necessarily requires expensive additional training or even dedicated crewmembers to deploy it. Not to mention the resulting windage and stability concerns that significantly affect the handling of the vessel.
Funding for such projects inevitably involves direct subsidies, or subsidies-in-effect to the companies pushing them on governments or other gullible investors (not to mention very generous remuneration for the executives involved). Such businesses or business units tend not to stick around very long at all.
Does France need a DOGE of its own to save taxpayers from its bureaucrats' climate fantasies? Let's hope the Trump Effect puts paid to this kind of thing as soon as possible -Ed