Public Funding for Wight Shipyard Company Limited

This project develops previous results from CMDC1 feasibility study "Cross River Zero Emissions Ferry" (Project number 10008713) to a real-world demonstrator of the vessel and supporting infrastructure. The objectives being to build the vessel with all requisite regulatory approval and to construct and install infrastructure to support implementation on the example cross river route on the river Thames between Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe. The intent is the demonstration will exceed the minimum service period required under the funding to provide a long-term evaluation in terms of energy efficiency, emissions reductions, societal impacts, operating costs and to provide a continuing development platform for the refinement of autonomous energy management, modal controls / machine learning to further reduce energy consumption. The consortium is formed of the original project partners, Thames Clippers (vessel operations), BAE (propulsion and controls), Wight Shipyard Company (vessel / berth construction and systems integration), Beckett Rankine (civil engineering and infrastructure) and supporting sub-contractors. We have added Aqua superPower to provide additional support with shore-based charging and grid connection. All partners have a proven track record in their individual disciplines and working in teams with experience of delivering previous successful CMDC projects. The vessel concept is a passenger and bicycle ferry incorporating end embarkation / disembarkation on a flow through principle improving passenger experience, which in combination with automatic mooring, reduces turnround time and overall journey time. The purely electric propulsion combined with potential green / renewable electricity supply provides the opportunity for a truly zero emission waterborne passenger transit system. The opportunity to optimise energy usage by intelligent energy management enhances existing electric vessel technology by providing the opportunity to increase efficiency / minimise overall energy usage and additional stress on the supply grid associated with electrification projects, meeting targets of net zero by 2050\. The route chosen for the demonstration will remove a conventional diesel-powered vessel providing a significant reduction in emissions in the operating area. The demonstrator will also provide proof of concept with evidence it is capable of deployment on other routes both within the UK and overseas reinforcing the opportunity for wider exploitation by the UK based partners. The overall concept will enable new short cross river passenger ferry operations to be deployed easily with minimal shore side infrastructure development beyond power availability and the ability to install piles to accommodate the floating berths and brows to facilitate access from the river-banks.

This proposal, submitted by a team comprising BAE Systems, Cory and Wight Shipyard under the Innovate UK Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition (Strand 1) is an initial feasibility study that will inform and de-risk the development and future operation of a fleet of up to 25 autonomous, self-propelled barges, powered by energy-from-waste generated by a waste processing plant in Belvedere, Kent. The study will assess the potential to extend the resulting shore-side charging infrastructure to provide a service to third party river users. This will reduce the barriers to entry for operators considering the transition away from fossil fuels and accelerating the decarbonisation of the wider Thames ecosystem to help achieve the government's 2050 net zero greenhouse gas target. This feasibility study will address the technical, operational and regulatory issues facing future low carbon marine traffic on the River Thames, where the complex city environment makes shore-side charging infrastructure a particular barrier, and where the tidal nature of the river brings additional complexity to vessel energy profiles. The study will cover an appraisal of various system options before outlining a detailed implementation roadmap. The project will focus on the integration of existing technologies where possible, but identify technology gaps and proposed solutions, together with how and when these will be embodied into the exploitation roadmap. We recognise that some technologies are currently less mature than others and the roadmap will articulate how these technologies can transition into the solution over time as technical maturity and regulatory appetite dictates. The key success criteria for the feasibility study will be the development of an exploitation roadmap that will lay the foundations for a concrete commercial deployment, and a fully costed plan for the next phase, which is a single vessel demonstration and evaluation system. The anticipated well-to-wake greenhouse gas reduction for the Cory implementation is 54,765 tonnes of CO2 based on the replacement of marine diesel with energy-from-waste over a 15 year operational lifetime. Extension of these concepts across other Thames operators facilitated by shore-side infrastructure as a service could increase this to 200,000 tonnes in the same timeframe.