Energy

  • The future could be bright for small island nations. Cheap sustainable energy is the core component of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

    Engineers like making things, but rarely think of the social impact that flows from their creations. Today, while we are standing at the threshold of sustainable energy, we should take a moment to reflect on the social impact of sustainable energy. Access to sustainable energy puts us at the threshold of massive social change and, if we play our cards right, we all could win big.

    Since human nature and human psychology has not significantly changed in centuries, the world as we know it is simply the result of technological innovation. Engineers like to conclude that our general improvement in livings standards is the result of technological innovations (jointly with medical and purely scientific innovations).

    That is really only partly true, because to a much stronger extent the March of Humanity has been driven by available energy. The first improvement came with fire, the next improvement came with animal power and the next improvement came with wind power (Yes, this is where maritime truly changed the world).

    Then we had a period of coal and then we had a period of oil and then we had an only partially successful period of nuclear power. The relative reduction in the cost of energy available to each human directly improved our living standards, although adversely it resulted in increased pollution and atmospheric carbon. Access to energy massively improved our lives.


    Photo: Martin & Ottaway


    Think of it this way: In 1820 I could only pound enough energy into a horse (food) and get enough work out of it to get me across the country in, at best, two months. Today I can purchase enough energy with a few days’ work to fly myself across the country in a few hours.

    Make no mistake about it. Money is nothing more than stored energy. We use money to get access to energy to support our life styles. While food uses sunlight to grow, the sunlight is only a tiny fraction of the energy it takes to get it into our mouths. Money is access to available energy, and available energy sustains our lifestyle. Cheap energy makes everything cheaper. Stealing money is stealing energy. Money hoarding is energy access hoarding. Equal access to energy is the core of a fair and just society.

    So now we are changing to sustainable energy. Will this lower or raise our standard of living? If sustainable energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuels we can expect our standard of living to improve. A decade ago, it was unclear as to whether sustainable energy would be cheaper than fossil fuels, but today there is massive evidence that we will develop the technologies where sustainable energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuel energy.
    That is only the first step in the program though, because it appears that sustainable energy also will produce less pollution which in turn will reduce the cost to remediate pollution damages.

    And then there is another benefit. In the last 10,000 or so years the production of energy has trended towards larger and larger corporate and government conglomerates. Our politics, whether on the local, national, or global level, have been largely driven by who has access to energy and who has not. Hence Saudi royal wealth, US wealth, and Russian oligarchs. However, sun, wind, and waves are more equally distributed across the globe than readily accessible fossil fuels, can be directly harvested and are much more difficult to own or hoard. That means, not too long from now, the standard of living on small tropical island nations may increase more rapidly than the rate of improvement in first world countries. But make no mistake sustainable energy is a rising tide that will lift many more ships than we have been able to do so far.

    On the individual level there is a further opportunity for change. Yes, we can buy our wind energy from large conglomerates and it will probably be quite cheap (My NJ elected energy supplier is a Texas wind farmer and their rate is lower than the standard utility rate). But if for any one reason I am not happy with the man, I can fight back. In the “old” days I could not drill my own oil well and refine the oil, but today I can find a piece of land and plant it with solar panels and, not too long from now, if I want transportable energy, I can collect the rain and turn it into hydrogen too. In other words, for the first time in thousands of years, our dependence on large corporate bodies will go down. That is, as long as there is a continued drive towards egalitarian humanitarian government.  

    Inherently, sustainable energy will raise our standard of living and while that may sound like fun, reality is little more complicated. The real question is: “Which standard of living?” If it allows a struggling underfed framer to live a little more like me, there is little to argue. But what about me? What would my raised standard of living look like? Bigger cars, bigger homes, more pointless travel, more sprawl, longer vacations at more luxurious resorts, more exotic foods and more debris generation?

    Humans have always looked for energy. It is the way they survive and when excess energy becomes available they store it and, if there is no need to store it, they waste it. I know, because I carry about 40 pounds of excess stored energy around my waist, and don’t always close the flue in my chimney after I had a fire. So how do we control this urge? With fossil fuels the cost of energy may have provided a little restraint, but what will happen when available energy becomes an order of magnitude cheaper?

    Don’t get me wrong, I am an engineer and that makes me an unlikely luddite, but an ounce of prevention today may prevent a pound of cure only a few years from now.

    I know there are some relatively simple answers, but they need to become deeply ingrained in the human psyche as soon as possible. Too often we think “bigger is better”, but, with plentiful energy, we need to begin to think “as small as possible is actually more beautiful” and “efficiency is the real spice of life”. And here is where the engineers get to take center stage again. As engineers, let’s make “bigger” a dirty word and make energy efficiency, regardless of the cost of energy, our central driver.

    It would start a virtuous cycle; if we focus on pure energy efficiency as our central design driver, less of our land and oceans needs to be covered with unnecessarily large homes, roads, solar panels, wind turbines, wave energy generators, pumped hydro storage, hydrogen converters, electric utility towers, hydro dams, hydro reservoirs, nuclear power plants and whatever other sustainable technologies we will be developing. And it will make the rising energy tide for all an even more powerful force.      


    For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a small donation to an organization of my choice. For this column I nominate the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation https://marinesanctuary.org/the marine version of the National Park Foundation. We need the oceans to survive, but let’s leave them as untouched as we can.

    Photo: Martin & Ottaway

  • Ocean Energy Systems (OES) was launched in 2001 as a technology collaboration program of the International Energy Agency (IEA). It was created in response to increased ocean wave and tidal current energy activity primarily in Denmark, Portugal and the United Kingdom. The organization today consists of 25

  • When one thinks of offshore renewable energy, one usually thinks of offshore wind.  For the first time progress is being made in the U.S. to develop offshore wind resources. The first steel foundation jacket has been placed in the ocean floor to support the Deepwater Wind project off the coast of Block

  • When one thinks of offshore renewable energy, one usually thinks of offshore wind.  For the first time progress is being made in the U.S. to develop offshore wind resources. The first steel foundation jacket has been placed in the ocean floor to support the Deepwater Wind project off the coast of Block

  • gas prices has predictably cooled a number of offshore renewable projects, there is a palpable change regarding the way in which the world views renewable energy. Renewable energy projects, at one time merely serving as window dressing, are slowly weaving their way into the mainstream energy mix, with European

  • our homes, drives our agricultural industry, and serves as a vital ingredient in everything from sulfa drugs to dishwashing detergents. In the words of energy consultant Daniel Yergin, "At the end of the twentieth century, oil was still central to security, prosperity and the very nature of civilization

  • This past February, the Administration released its long-awaited National Energy Strategy, laying out a range of options for federal energy policy that could reduce the nation's dependence on imported oil, especially from unstable sources like the Mideast. The proposal contains programs designed to

  • its impact on the environment. In January 2013, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) put into force new regulations intended to improve the energy efficiency of ships over 400 gross tonnes (gt) on international voyages, including a requirement to keep on board a ship-specific Ship Energy Efficiency

  • IMA/World Energy Reports has just completed a comprehensiveassessment of the five year outlook for the deepwater sector.  The new report – the 19th annual floater market forecast prepared by IMA since 1996 -- provides our forecast of orders for floating production systems between 2016 and 2020.  Here’s an

  • Production System Orders Between 2015-2019, a new 150-page report completed in October 2014.  Find more information and ordering details at: www.worldenergyreports.com   (As published in the November 2014 edition of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News - http://magazines.marinelink.com/Magazines/MaritimeRep

  • in Africa, a production semi in the GOM and several FSOs in SE Asia – all within 2015.   Details for 2015 expected orders are in the January IMA/World Energy Report.  But the pressure on reducing project cost will be intense over the next year at all levels of the floater supply chain – and, as workload

  • In today’s energy industry, things are moving fast. The upheaval brought about by COVID-19 and exacerbated by the Russia-Saudi Arabia oil price war has been so profound that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has described the situation as “a once in a century event for energy demand”. This is supported

  • MR Feb-24#40  and now, making 
you consider energy density, you need about)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 40

    also have our ? eet nia than HFO,” said Brindley. “That’s just the weight. When engineering team, which looks at the here and now, making you consider energy density, you need about three times the sure the vessels are as ef? cient as possible. We need to catch quantity of ammonia for an equivalent energy

  • MR Feb-24#39  location, 
In July 2023, MAN Energy Solutions announced the)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 39

    to traditional diesel fuel],” said major progress expected in 2024. Räsänen. “You need to be careful on the bunkering location, In July 2023, MAN Energy Solutions announced the successful the size of the bunkering, how you pull your pipes between ? rst running of a test engine [MAN B&W two-stroke

  • MR Feb-24#38  be produced using renewable energy sources,   for a pilot)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 38

    treatment. • Renewable Production Potential: “Green” Ammonia While ammonia itself is without carbon, there is the need can be produced using renewable energy sources, for a pilot fuel to start the combustion process. “The engine such as wind or solar power, through electrolysis. manufacturers are looking

  • MR Feb-24#37 , at Yaskawa Environmental Energy / The Switch
The Switch’s)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 37

    improves ef? ciency by 2-4% compared to synchronous machines." – Dr. Jussi Puranen, Head of Product Line, Electric Machines, at Yaskawa Environmental Energy / The Switch The Switch’s shaft generators start from <1MW and range up to 12MW+. Source: Wärtsilä Source: Aasen Shipping Source: The Switch www

  • MR Feb-24#36  PTO powertrain 
Source: MAN Energy Solutions
how the system)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 36

    HYBRID 2-stroke controllable pitch propeller PTO powertrain Source: MAN Energy Solutions how the system is intended to operate, says Oskar Levander, VP Strategy & Business Development, Kongsberg Maritime. For example, a primary shaft-driven PTO rotates whenever the engine is running; a secondary one

  • MR Feb-24#35  50 tons of equip- lowers their energy consumption and to the)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 35

    a shaft generator is not an insigni? - the ef? ciency of modern permanent magnet technology that cant undertaking. Around 50 tons of equip- lowers their energy consumption and to the variable speed ment needs to be installed into the engineroom drives that enable them to provide constant power over a wid- through

  • MR Feb-24#34  on the Rise
Source: MAN Energy Solutions
MR #2 (34-44))
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 34

    HYBRID Shaft Generators Demand on the Rise Source: MAN Energy Solutions MR #2 (34-44).indd 34 2/6/2024 8:47:46 AM

  • MR Feb-24#29  of changing  ing and enacting energy transition to hit  Also)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 29

    . But with the Covid es facing any shipowner today: embrac- that’s just one potential talking point. pandemic and the myriad of changing ing and enacting energy transition to hit Also, there are around 16 different fuel cost dynamics, from raging in? ation to decarbonization targets. options for ships today

  • MR Feb-24#22  
of decarbonization, energy transition and autonomy)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 22

    R&D MATT HART Matt Hart, Manager & Platform Leader, Marine & Stationary Power Systems, Wabtec, offers insights on how the megatrends of decarbonization, energy transition and autonomy all inspire Image courtesy Wabtec and impact the marine power solutions from Wabtec. By Greg Trauthwein Matt, to start us

  • MR Feb-24#20  of low and zero emission energy carriers, 
In all, 18)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 20

    MARKETS FPSO technology dominates the region’s FPS demand. duction and storage of low and zero emission energy carriers, In all, 18 countries in West and East Africa are expected such as methanol and ammonia. One exciting development to receive new FPSOs, FLNGs and FPUs between 2024 and leverages

  • MR Feb-24#16  to prevent corrosion. 
lent energy as HFO.  The SPS sandwich)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 16

    also creates oxygen-free condi- ton, it takes 2.4 times more methanol to generate the equiva- tions behind the steel plates to prevent corrosion. lent energy as HFO. The SPS sandwich panel system can be used in lieu of coffer- Conventionally, tanks storing low ? ashpoint fuels on board dams on all tank

  • MR Feb-24#13  times, the pandemic and the energy 
crisis, are behind them)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 13

    21% falling one spot from the 2023 rankings. While companies may be con? dent that the worst of two key disruptors of recent times, the pandemic and the energy crisis, are behind them. Business disruption remains a key concern as ? rms are challenged to build resilience and diver- sify supply chains in

  • MR Feb-24#12  accel-
erate its adoption of energy-ef?  cient 
technologies)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 12

    of these batteries has been least 40% by 2030, and 70% by 2050. The IMO’s target is ambitious, and the industry will need to accel- erate its adoption of energy-ef? cient technologies and fuels, such as wind propulsion, biofuels, hydrogen, and ammonia to meet its goal. Political Risks Political risks and

  • MR Feb-24#6  of maritime transport as both  Energy transition and alternative)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 6

    to increase globally, and energies take a bite out of the bottom line. Editor - MarineNews Eric Haun the importance of maritime transport as both Energy transition and alternative fuels are [email protected] a global commerce enabler and a bedrock of everywhere. While traditional diesel is still

  • MR Feb-24#4  Learning Systems, maker of  energy and maritime sectors.)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 4

    van Hemmen is the President Murray Goldberg is CEO of Ma- gic planning experience in the of Martin & Ottaway, a marine rine Learning Systems, maker of energy and maritime sectors. consulting ? rm that specializes in MarineLMS. the resolution of technical, opera- MacLeod tional and ? nancial issues. Business

  • MR Feb-24#2  of decar-
bonization, energy transition and autonomy)
    February 2024 - Maritime Reporter and Engineering News page: 2

    Courtesy ARC 22 Marine Power: The Future is Now Departments Matt Hart, Wabtec Corporation, offers insights on how the megatrends of decar- bonization, energy transition and autonomy drive engine innovations. 4 Authors & Contributors By Greg Trauthwein 6 Editorial 8 Training Tips for Ships Addressing Barriers 26

  • MN Feb-24#38  operate  6.2 MWh Orca battery energy storage system from Corvus)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 38

    of Crowley’s mi- grated electrical propulsion package provided by ABB, a crogrid shoreside charging station. The vessel will operate 6.2 MWh Orca battery energy storage system from Corvus with zero emissions while providing the complete perfor- Energy and two electrically driven Schottel RudderPropel- mance

  • MN Feb-24#29  been experienced in other energy industries, such as 
coal)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 29

    .” In terms of cost escalations and other “bumps in the road” for offshore wind, Møller pointed to similar challenges that have been experienced in other energy industries, such as coal and nuclear power. “And if we go back to before the COVID crisis at least, then [offshore wind was] compatible or have

  • MN Feb-24#28  wind still blows “free”, but  energy future. While a handful)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 28

    have placed an exclamation point on wind is incorporated as a growing part of the United States’ the word “wild”. Yes, the wind still blows “free”, but energy future. While a handful of projects have been de- mounting challenges have proven that harnessing its railed, others continue to push forward with

  • MN Feb-24#20  workforce. 
the New York State Energy Research and Development)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 20

    a cascading impact on nouncing on January 3 that they had reached terms with the U.S. maritime industry and the American workforce. the New York State Energy Research and Development For example, concurrent with the termination of the Em- Authority (NYSERDA) to terminate the Offshore Wind pire Wind 2 OREC

  • MN Feb-24#17   connection of battery energy storage  modate increase)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 17

    Emergency Transportation can be mitigated through the inter- sels and upgrade terminals to accom- Authority (WETA) for upgrading connection of battery energy storage modate increase power requirements. its ferry ? oats to include battery en- systems, but there are other signi? cant However, many operators

  • MN Feb-24#16  the Green
By Kaiya Levine, Energy & Sustainability Consultant)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 16

    Column Going Green For Ferries to Go Green, Governments Will Need to Provide the Green By Kaiya Levine, Energy & Sustainability Consultant, Arup Whether it is from international organizations ? ve nautical miles or less, meaning they have relatively low or state government agencies, there is growing

  • MN Feb-24#6  writer specializing in marine, energy and envi- is a retired)
    February 2024 - Marine News page: 6

    February 2024 • Volume 35 Number 2 Contributors 3 1 24 6 5 7 8 1 Tom Ewing 5 Edward Lundquist is a freelance writer specializing in marine, energy and envi- is a retired naval of? cer who writes on maritime and ronmental issues. He contributes regularly to this magazine. security issues. He is

  • MT Jan-24#60  focus on the climate and bio-
Energy; Asset Integrity and Monitoring)
    January 2024 - Marine Technology Reporter page: 60

    boundaries and between sectors. Ocean ICT; Navigation and Positioning; Offshore Renewable The special edition at Oi24 will focus on the climate and bio- Energy; Asset Integrity and Monitoring; Bathymetry. There diversity crisis. It will take a futuristic look at how key areas are also a number of associated