Creative Spearhead Technologies

Posted on | May 14, 2010 | No Comments

In order to transform energy systems on a large scale we need to develop and make creative use of spearhead technologies. Of course there are such technologies that are under development, but that have not yet proven their potential in reducing our dependence on energy for economic growth.

I came across one such technology a few weeks ago when I visited the Swedish shipbuilding company Kockums. This company has been building ships in the city of Karlskrona for 200 years and in the past thirty years it has developed applications for carbon-fibre constructions for ships and other heavy constructions, that demand more stability than applications in airplanes, yachts, cars and other previous applications.

http://www.kockums.se/en/

Kockums builds the hull and the other main parts of the ship in carbon-fibre, which results in a much lighter, and more energy efficient, ship than in the case of aluminum.

The previous ships have been purchased by the Swedish Navy, for example the series of the stealth coast corvettes of the Visby series. These navy orders have rendered the company a unique competence in building full scale ships that cannot be matched by any other shipyard in the world.

Now Kockums has developed a series of workboats and passenger ferries under the brand name of Carbo CAT. These offer superior life cycle cost and energy efficiency compared to existing aluminum ships.

Visionaries in the ship-building and carbon fibre industries talk about the future “Carbon Fibre Crusade”, which might replace aluminum, concrete and other materials as construction materials for large scale structures.

One vision of an energy-saving transportation system involves the use of light-weight carbon-fibre ships for coastal freights. These ships could, as opposed to heavier steel or aluminum vessels, go into city ports and load and un-load goods close to city centers. This could give rise to entirely new energy efficient transportation systems, where trucks run on renewable fuels could transport containers and pallets the short distances from these ports to the destinations in the cities. This could dramatically reduce the energy use for medium distance transportation. Carbon fibre could also be used in order to build superstructures on large freight ships, that increase the loading capacity and improve the energy efficiency of sea transportation.

In order to make these things happen rapidly, and on a large scale, authorities on a national or regional level need to decide to implement new transportation systems based on carbon-fibre ships. If a number of such systems were planned, this would also lead to the development of ancillary technologies for loading of ships, IT-applications for the management of these systems, and the development of trucks, loading docks etc for the city transportation solutions. In the absence of such large scale projects the growth of carbon fibre will be slower and we will wait longer to reap the benefits of this potentially ground-breaking technology.

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