Birkeland
Container ship from Norway is fully electric, climate-neutral and no longer needs a crew
From the outside, the “Birkeland” does not differ from a conventional ship.
© Torstein Bøe / AFP
The “Birkeland” has completed her maiden voyage. It is powered by batteries, and it drives autonomously without a crew or a helmsman.
The corona pandemic has delayed the maiden voyage of the world’s first fully electric and emission-free container ship. But now the “Birkeland” has made the first voyage, a mini-stretch to the port of Brevik. The container ship is not supposed to circumnavigate the world, it is a feeder, it can also be called a container ferry. It was built to bring the products of the fertilizer manufacturer Yara to the port in Bervik.
The “Birkeland” will replace around 40,000 truck journeys a year. This should save around 1000 tons of carbon emissions per year. The “Birkeland” transports 120 containers each 20 feet long, is 80 meters long and reaches 15 knots. A 7 MWh battery serves as the energy supplier. That’s roughly the equivalent of 100 Tesla cars. The “Birkeland” only travels a few times a week, so it has time to recharge.
State funding
The Norwegian state subsidized the construction with 133 million crowns, which corresponds to around 13 million euros. On the occasion of the first voyage, Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store visited the ship. Shipping is one of the major CO2-emitters, in Scandinavia attempts are being made to produce climate-neutral alternatives. A battery works for short distances, but not for a long time. In Sweden they are therefore building the Oceanbird car ferry, which will cross the Atlantic with sails and wind power. Yara’s plant in Porsgrunn is one of Norway’s largest emitters of CO2.
The “Birkeland” is one of the measures with which the company wants to become climate neutral. Another one, with a greater impact on the carbon footprint, is the planned conversion of fertilizer production to “green ammonia”. “We made this technological leap to show that something like this is possible, there are many routes in the world where you could use the same type of ship,” CEO Svein Tore Holsether told Reuters.
Ghost ship without a crew
In addition to the electric and climate-neutral drive, the ship also works fully automatically. It can load and unload the containers independently and navigate without human intervention. From next year the ship will make two trips a week. At first with a human crew. Autonomous navigation is to be tested for two years. Sensors should also quickly detect small objects such as kayaks in the water and control the ship accordingly in order to avoid a collision. The system is said to be safer than a human control. “We switched off the human element, which is also the cause of many accidents these days,” said the project manager. In Norway it is difficult to find workers for simple work, so the elimination of truck tours is also practical for this reason.