At the Yacht Club de Monaco alternative fuels take center stage

‘Alternative fuels and advanced yachting technology’

It is the title of one of the conferences held at the Yacht Club de Monaco during the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge week, aiming to build the yachting sector of the future. Sharing the goal of the Monaco Capital of Advanced Yachting approach, the conference addressed the questions of technology awareness for the maritime and yachting industries regarding alternative fuels and advanced state-of-the-art technologies.

From the yachting industry perspective

Methanol and its role in the net zero goal were covered from the yachting industry perspective. “At Lürssen, we’ve been looking at alternative fuels for many years, and we’ve looked into different kinds. Several criteria are relevant for alternative fuels, such as energy density, safety, handling, etc. Methanol is the most promising fuel in terms of energy density. It’s straightforward to handle and easily stored at the bottom of the boat. Whereas if you look at hydrogen, it has a reduced energy density, and you have to store it in a cylindrical tank, which has to be stored not on the bottom of the ship, so that takes valuable space within the yacht. That is why we’re going on methanol. Now there’s more or less an understanding in yachting industry looking at the different engine manufacturers that are developing engines for methanol”, said Bernhard Urban, head of development& innovation at Lürssen. “We need to work together. We need yards and technical partners, but also for yacht owners and crews to be confident, fuels to be available in ports, and authorities to be fast in defining the regulations”, added Paolo Bertetti, vice president of Technical and R&D at Sanlorenzo.

Role of nuclear energy in the yachting sector

Moving forward, the role of nuclear energy in the yachting sector was also discussed. “It is possible to have a nuclear reactor on board a yacht. A different thing is how effective it is. We started researching around ten years ago but still have to wait for small reactors. We’ve seen that it is possible to build it in the yacht, which will then be a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier, but as most of our yachts sail in a limited time of the year, we think it’s less effective to have a nuclear reactor on board. The reactor can provide 100% of the time and 100% of the power, but only a few percent of the time, we use the full power. The rest of the time is for anchor. So, we think having a nuclear reactor on shore or somewhere floating is actually more effective. We would see that coming earlier and maybe later on if there’s more production of nuclear reactors, if costs will go down, if safety issues are solved and are accepted by the general public, maybe in 20-30 years, there’ll be room for nuclear reactors on board”, said Ronno Schouten, senior specialist Feadship.

While navigating sustainability, measuring emissions and defining life cycles is essential. “We’re continuing the development of the Sea Index, and today we launched a collaboration with the maritime class society ‘RINA.’ It is a new methodology to calculate Co2 emissions based on the fuel’s bunkering and the fuel’s choice. It’s also a future-proof methodology because it can consider biofuels and different concentrations of those biofuels with a well-to-wake approach. We’re hoping that this methodology, which will be accessible on our website very soon, will be used by people and also to see the impact depending on the type of fuel chosen,” said Natalie Quévert, Sea Index head of the project.