Shipbuilding and maritime supply chain organisations are traditionally based in coastal regions in NWE. Over the last decades coastal regions and the shipping industry alike faced demographic and innovation capacity challenges as especially younger people left these regions and ship(supply) production was largely outsourced to low income countries. As climate change is there to stay, maritime supply chain organisations in coastal regions are challenged to increase their innovation capacity to become fit again to contribute to mitigation solutions.
Wind Assisted Ship Propulsion (WASP) can save20% of fossil fuel and up to 40% for scaled up rotors and wings. When Wind Propulsion Technologies(WPT) can rapidly scale-up to lower production costs, wide uptake that contribute to EU's sustainable shipping regulations and emission reduction targets will come soon.
In W4S we will upscale production, upscale rotor sails and wing sails, we will make the shift from the present “ne-off rotorsails and wingsails”to serial production of economic viable (cheaper) wing- and rotor sails.
In our coastal remoted NWE regions, Pays de la Loire Brittany(FR), Fryslan(NL), Weser-Ems(DE), we will accelerate 3 innovative WPT Ecosystems connected in one overarching NWE WPT Ecosystem; W4S, following smart specialization strategies.
Our W4S approach targets upscaling production and sizes of wing- and rotorsail; in 4 pilot actions we will test and showcase production-, test wingsails and rotorsails on ships and build the body of knowledge for further uptake of WASP in the NWE. This will be realized by our excellent partnership that includes, manufacturers, developers of rotor- and wing sails, smart specialization strategists,university and higher education partners and last but not least our launching customers, our shipowners.
Scale-up asks for innovative production facilities, where automated production is in place, with not more, but better trained and skilled workers and a more innovative supply-chain eco-system in place to support that production. It will lead to improved innovation capacity and resilient organisations active in new supply chains for wind propulsion techniques in coastal NWE regions. We will be capture a nice part of the green upcoming WASP market worldwide .