The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) has launched a competition to accelerate the development of technologies with the potential to reduce vessel emissions and fuel consumption.

Up to £100,000 in funding will be awarded to the winning technologies, from a total funding pot of £300,000, to support technology development or demonstration.

The OWA Low Emission Vessels competition will focus on innovations for Crew Transfer Vessels (CTVs). Designs submitted to the competition will be assessed for overall cost, operations, and safety advantages to ensure they are viable solutions for offshore wind operations. Vessel designs, power and propulsion technologies as well as energy-providing systems will be considered within the scope of the competition.

The competition is being run in parallel with an OWA commissioned study to evaluate potential technologies for reducing emissions and fuel consumption that are suitable for, or show potential to be used, in offshore wind vessels safely. The study aims to:

• Reduce vessel emissions, fuel costs and vessels’ operational maintenance costs for offshore wind operations
• Understand and evaluate the cost/benefit of existing and future powering and storage technologies, particularly from other industries
• Determine the infrastructure required for integrating this new technology into offshore wind operations

The competition is being delivered by the Carbon Trust and Black & Veatch on behalf of the Scottish Government and the nine OWA industry partners: EnBW, E.ON, Equinor, Innogy, Ørsted, Scottish Power Renewables, Shell, SSE, and Vattenfall Wind Power.

Dan Kyle Spearman, Manager of Offshore Wind Access Systems, the Carbon Trust, commented:

“The Low Emissions Vessels Competition demonstrates the commitment of the OWA developers to help further decarbonize offshore wind vessels, going beyond the regulatory requirements for vessel emissions. The available funding will help kick-start the wider industry into looking into new ideas and using their ingenuity to overcome these challenges. The offshore wind industry also has a great opportunity to be a testbed and demonstration platform for new low-carbon technologies.”