Harnessing the Wind to Reduce CO2 at Sea. Aloft with Miles Keeney-Ritchie

Happy Planet Wednesday !

We've talked quite a bit about renewable energy on this podcast and we've also looked at old technologies that are coming back, often with a modern twist. Our guest today is starting a business that checks both of those boxes.

Miles Keeney-Ritchie, founder of Aloft, aims to reduce ocean transportation carbon emissions by installing their automated fiberglass sails on ships and ferries to take some of the burden off the engine and reduce fuel consumption. Thanks to an event organized by Sea Ahead, our bluetech accelerator and investment friends in Boston, I have personally seen their demo size sail and I must say it does capture the imagination. Miles hopes it can capture market share!

Just a reminder, you can listen to Happy Planet pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts, or by following one of these links:  Apple , Spotify, Google, or our website.

SPONSORS & PARTNERS
Many thanks to Maine Technology Institute, Maine Venture Fund and Spark No.9 for their sponsorship.

I’d also like to thank our promotional partners. Investable Oceans is a US-based angel platform specializing in ocean-related startups.

Oceanovation is a fast-growing hub for entrepreneurs and investors in blue-tech innovation.

Miles Keeney-Ritchie
Aloft

Transcript

Abigail: Welcome to the podcast today where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I'm your host, Abigail Carroll. We've talked quite a bit about renewable energy on this podcast, and we've also looked at old technologies that are coming back, often with a modern twist. Our guest today is starting a business that checks both of those boxes.

His name is Miles Keeney-Ritchie and his company, Aloft, aims to reduce ocean transportation carbon emissions by installing automated fiberglass sails on ships and ferries to take some of the burden off the engine and reduce fuel consumption. Thanks to an event organized by See Ahead, I have personally seen their demo size sail and I must say it does capture the imagination, but let's hear it from Miles.

Welcome to the podcast, Miles. We're so happy to have you here.

Miles: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Abigail: It's very exciting what you're doing and it comes as a big surprise in many respects because you're really... what's old is new again at Aloft. So tell me what you guys do.

Miles: Absolutely. Well, as I'm sure you are aware and maybe have talked about already on the podcast, there is a huge amount, an almost inconceivably large amount of energy in the wind that's out on our oceans. This is why there's so much promise for offshore wind turbines. And our mission at Aloft is to take the energy that is in that wind and make it useful again for every commercial vessel. So, we're an early stage robotics startup, and the way that we're doing that is by transplanting robotics technology that's been developed in other industries and adapting them to be useful in the modern maritime ecosystem. Specifically, we're making autonomous sails that are packaged in a modular way so that we can install them onto almost any vessel.

And when the wind conditions are appropriate, they'll automatically fold up and help push the vessel forward. And then if for whatever reason the crew needs them to not be there or the wind conditions deteriorate, they'll put themselves away. And all without any intervention from the group.

Abigail: Wow. All right. So I just want to recap and try to create an image for the listeners. So we're talking about, potentially, a ferry or a tanker ship crossing the Atlantic. And you were creating robotic sails. Isthat how you would describe it?

Miles: Yeah, you know, they don't look like robots, but all of the, insides are very similar to any other robotics or automation system. So it's very clear that if we're going to make wind useful for modern vessels, it's not going to be large canvas sails and people running up and down rigging. that's just not how the modern maritime industry works, and so we have to automate it.

So yeah, imagine a massive airplane wing that stood up vertically, and instead of lifting the plane off the ground, it helps push the ship forward.

Abigail: It's kind of crazy and uncanny to think that we're going full circle here. We have these big, huge tankers they are, consuming gas. We're trying to convert this for many reasons or reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And we're looking towards sail technology. So why embrace sail technology? Why is this better than some of the other technologies available and what are the other technologies available?

Miles: Well, we, we like to think of, um, we had this long, rich history of using the energy in the wind and, and using sails for thousands of years, and then we got distracted by fossil fuels for 150. And now we're gonna, we're gonna come back. Now that technology and, and automation and weather prediction and materials have come to the point where we can make that fit into the modern way that ships operate.

To your question about what other fuels or options there are, wind is fascinating because it's extremely versatile and it complements pretty much every other method of propulsion that people are talking about. So if you imagine in the current system we're burning diesel or marine fuel. And you install a sail on your vessel, any energy that we pull out of the wind and turn into thrust means that we don't have to burn that diesel to push the ship forward. So we directly reduce the amount of fuel that's burned.

Abigail: Right. Cause your goal is reduction, not replacement.

Miles: It's a long game. So... I would absolutely love to be designing a ship from the ground up and have it be primarily wind powered and build a whole fleet of those and completely remake the logistics network. That's a really, really cool problem to solve and a really, really cool way to bring the logistics network into the 21st century. The reality is... Depending on how you count, there's 50 to 100, 000 commercial vessels in the global fleet. We're not going to snap and make those go away. So, the practical side of my brain says we need a solution that works for the vessels that we have and the logistics network that we have. So, we're focusing, like many others in the industry, we're focusing on retrofitting sails onto existing vessels. And, you know, in that scenario, that corner of the sandbox, it does mean reducing as opposed to completely eliminating.

Abigail: Right. So I want to understand a little bit about how this works and with modern technology, can you sail across the Atlantic faster than you could, you know, 200 years ago when that was our only option?

Miles: The unsatisfying answer is it all depends on your vessel and how you have installed the sails. Essentially how, how many sails you have. A slightly better answer is because we have modern weather prediction where we can predict very accurately two to three days out and reasonably accurately up to ten days out we can actually route the vessels to find good wind so we can Goldilocks it and find a route where there's enough wind but not too much and In any kind of retrofit scenario, you will be using the engine for propulsion.

So we call it motor sailing. And the whole idea is to maximize the amount of energy that we can get from the sails so that we can minimize the amount of energy that the engine has to provide. And we've done some modeling for transatlantic routes and when you're in this scenario of motor sailing, it's actually quite consistent in terms of your transit time. There is some seasonal variation because there's seasonal variation in the wind, but over the course of an entire year, the transit time is only 15 to 25 percent longer, which is within the realm that a company can make up with their fleet and adjust the cargo so that it all arrives when it needs to.

Abigail: Yep. And so, but there's savings. I mean, not just carbon emissions, although they might be able to get credit for that carbon credits, but you're going 15 or 20 percent slower, but how is that affecting your fossil fuel consumption?

Miles: So, the more sails you put on the vessel, the more, uh, energy you get out of them, the more thrust you get, and there's an upper limit, so below around 20 to 30 percent of the propulsion you need, the sails don't really affect the performance of the vessel, and above that number, then the sails start, being dominant in some scenarios where you have a lot of wind, and in those cases you really have to switch your mindset to sailing a vessel as opposed to motoring a vessel.

So, given where the industry is now, most, us included, but most companies working in this space are staying below that number where it's significant fuel savings. If you ask a vessel owner what it would mean to save 20 percent in their fuel costs, that's a huge number.

Abigail: Of course.

Miles: And that allows us to remain in a regime where they don't have to completely re-learn how to operate their vessels. They can still motor them as normal. it's not going to completely solve the maritime piece of climate change, but it's a massive, massive chunk out of the emissions.

Abigail: Wow. So just so I understand the motor is running when the sails are up, or you, you actually turn the motor off.

Miles: So, in the vast majority of cases... The motor will be running all the time. And similar to hybrid cars, you can either use the sails to provide additional thrust and go faster, or you can back off the engine when you have the sails up and maintain the speed. We talk primarily about the second case. Because the water resistance goes up really steeply with speed on vessels, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to go faster. It takes a huge amount of energy to go a little bit faster. And so it's much more economically beneficial in most cases to back off your engine...

Abigail: Right. Use less fuel.

Miles: ...use less fuel, take those savings and still, you know, arrive at the same time at your destination. 

Abigail: Yeah. So,we had somebody on earlier this spring, from a company called TECO 2030- it's a Norwegian company- and they're actually in the process of doing, of retrofitting of ship, a container ship with hydrogen. But it seems like your system basically could. add value to any type of ship, regardless of what's powering it.

Miles: Absolutely. That's the cool thing about wind. So you have to buy the asset, the sail, but the actual energy is free. The fuel is free. And so when you pair wind with every other technology, it has a lot of mutual benefit. So for example: Two of the leading alternative fuels are ammonia and methanol and, and actually hydrogen falls into this category in other forms. All three of those require a huge amount of shoreside infrastructure to be developed and a logistics network to move those fuels around the world and stage them at the bunkering sites where ships need to refuel. And that's an amazing challenge, but it's something that will take time. A lot of that technology isn't even commercialized yet. And wind propulsion only requires the ship side. You only have to develop the technology that goes on the ship and install it on the ship. So in the short term, wind propulsion can mitigate the emissions and costs. of running standard marine fuels before we get the whole methanol, ammonia, hydrogen networks built out.

In the long term, methanol and ammonia especially are less energy dense than the long chain hydrocarbons that we use now. And so ship designers are having to make this tradeoff where they either reduce the amount of cargo they can carry and still maintain the range of the vessel or reduce the range and keep the same cargo.

If you install sails on that vessel and have them work in concert with ammonia or methanol, then we suddenly extend the range back out to the existing vessel or even more. And then they also provide some redundancy because it's a separate propulsion system. So when we're talking about relatively, quote, unproven technology in the alternative fuels, we can provide an extra layer of safety with having sails on there to... 

Abigail: Yeah. 

Miles: ...to help. So, you know, the design… The design is a steel and aluminum internal structure and then a fiberglass skin. And the reasoning behind that is it's really an industrial piece of equipment. So it needs to be rugged and it needs to be able to handle all of the abuse that occurs out on the ocean. 

Abigail: So what is the best use case that you see right now for your solution?

Miles: Wind can be adapted for... The vast majority of vessels in the global fleet. The easiest or the most useful when it comes to wind are vessels that spend a lot of time in motion. You know, because this is essentially a little engine, it doesn't help you if you're sitting at anchor. Other aspects that make it easier to integrate wind are: having some open deck space, if you happen to work in the spot trade, run at moderate speeds and, and have some discretion over the routes you can take. Because of that, most of the industry is really focused on these ultra-large bulk carriers, which are great. but they're a tiny fraction of the global market and make a relatively small chunk of the emissions. So, at Aloft, we've been focusing on smaller vessels, so vessels less than 25,000 deadweight tons, and these make up the majority of the fleet, and are significantly more pollutive when you normalize it by the cargo that they carry.

Abigail: Interesting. Yeah.

Miles: It's a pretty broad category though. 

Abigail: So give us some examples. 

Miles: Well, so this is everything from small, uh, general cargo vessels that you see in the coastal trade in Europe to articulated tug barges, which we have in the coastal trade here in the US, even to platform supply vessels that make short voyages.

A great example is the offshore wind construction boom that's happening off the east coast of the U.S. Right now. There are thousands of trips that will be required with these small kind of pickup trucks of the ocean that will take components and people and food, and a bunch of other duties, you know, from a staging port out to the construction site.

And the great part about that is that these construction sites are built in windy places because they're for a wind farm. And so these routes are already ideal for wind propulsion, but in the example of these platform supply vessels, they have a big flat deck on the back that is reconfigured for every charter that they get.

And they tend to work on relatively short charters, and so it doesn't make sense for them to install a massive permanent sail like the ones that are going on the big bulk carriers. They need something that they can reconfigure to match whatever their next job is. So that's where the modularity of Aloft sails comes in.

We can take our basic sail technology and scale it to match the size of the vessel. We can package it on a skid or package it even in a shipping container to make it extremely easy to load on and load off when a ship is mobilizing for a charter. And then we can even build a permanent foundation on a vessel if that makes sense for that vessel too. So it makes it really easy to configure.

Abigail: I'm interested to know how is the market responding to this? you know, it seems so retro to be putting, fixing sails on your, on your boat, but yours are, empowered by robotics and high tech. Are people in the States or in Europe, are theygame? 

Miles: It, uh, well, it's interesting that you bring up the U.S. And Europe, there's, uh, distinctly different mindsets. In Europe, the conversation immediately moves past the, "is this a good idea?", uh, and into "how can we make it work?". and so there's a lot more openness in Europe just from the start. 

Abigail: Yeah. 

Miles: we've spent a lot of time in the US, partly because the US is kind of neglected by a lot of the maritime world because of our idiosyncrasies, which means that it doesn't get to take a lot of the benefits from pushing technology forward. And in the US, we're in a very fascinating period. Because there is this upswing in offshore wind construction, which is disrupting the, oil and gas offshore world, because we're going to need to repurpose a lot of those vessels and retrain and repurpose a lot of the the people to work on these wind turbines.

And so there's... a weird and beneficial kind of openness to new ideas. This is the first major build out of offshore technology that's not oil and gas in the U.S. And so there's this acknowledgement that we as an industry don't quite know how to do it and so people are open to different ways of accomplishing it.

The other thing is that a lot of the actual project developers, the companies building the wind turbines or building the installations, are eventually up the chain owned by European companies. And so that European mindset of being tuned into ESG and reporting your emissions and that sort of thing is starting to trickle down and pressure even the, the vessel operators.

Abigail: Who are American, presumably. 

Miles: Who are American, yes, exactly. And, at the moment, there really aren't any options for them. So, so it's a really interesting time.

Abigail: Is there as much pressure on American companies and vessel operators as there is on Europeans to comply to new, you know, restrictions or regulations? 

Miles: Well, so, Europe certainly has slightly tighter regulations. Um, the... The International Maritime Organization, the IMO, the UN body that regulates the international side of it, um, has some regulations and they've introduced some, uh, emissions EEXI and CII.

There aren't strong punitive measures associated with those yet. We're still in a measurement phase and this coming year, Europe is going to introduce a new set of taxes, based around the fuel types that you use and the fuel that you burn, and there's nothing like that in the U.S. I would say that the majority of the pressure though is less regulatory and more social.

So when a company is closer to the consumers, you know, they're more vocal about requesting reductions in, in their supply chain emissions. And we tend to see that more with the European companies that we've talked to than the U.S. Companies, although it is, it is coming in the U.S.

Abigail: Well, I mean, that's good to hear. You said something that I actually have never heard before. You said the U.S. has idiosyncrasies that are kind of keeping it removed from the general trends and technologies that are advancing the maritime world in other parts of the world. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? 

Miles: I can, and I'm not a lawyer, but this is, um, that's generally how I refer to the Jones Act, because the Jones Act is this lovely double sword, right, um, and in some respects it, it reduces the incentives for innovations that happen elsewhere to percolate into the U.S. System 

Abigail: So, uh, under the Jones Act, foreign carriers and crews are banned from domestic water routes. Cabotage from one U.S. Port to another is restricted to U.S. Built, crewed, and flagged vessels. This requirement was a protectionist economic strategy designed to assist America's shipyards and maritime fleets. 

Miles: And it's a double edged sword. In a lot of respects, everyone in the U.S. Offshore industry owes their jobs to, in part to that, but also it means that, especially when we're talking about stuff like Aloft, the vessels need to be Primarily built in the U.S. And so there's a percentage of the equipment and the steel, you know, that goes into the vessel that has to be U.S. So that means that ship designers and shipbuilders have to be a little bit careful if they're looking to pull in innovations from elsewhere. Uh, they still have to meet that limit to be Jones Act compliant.

Abigail: we're going to take a break to hear a word from our sponsors. But when we return, Miles will share how the first field test of his technology turned out. 

Welcome back to Happy Planet. My guest today is Miles Keeney-Ritchie from Aloft. Aloft has had enough trials now that they have begun to collect data from the real world. I asked him how they measure results and how it's been going. 

Miles: That's our quarter scale prototype So it's a 15 foot wingsail, and last spring we took it out on a small aquaculture vessel. It was a mussel farming vessel with Bangs Island mussels. 

Shout out to… 

Abigail: I think I introduced you all. 

Miles: You did, you did. And we're very grateful to you and to Matt and to Annie, um, for being so kind to us and helping out. So we did a test on their vessel where we were manually operating the sail. And so... The first portion of it, we had them just go about their activities and we ran a bunch of tests on the sail to make sure that it was running properly and make sure that we could actually generate thrust while the vessel was doing what it normally does.

And then after they were done with their work, we ran a couple dedicated tests to really characterize the sail performance. And in those tests, we did exactly what we were talking about earlier in the podcast, where we would run the vessel at a known speed without the sail, and then we would raise the sail, and then reduce the engine down until we were back to running the same speed we were before.

And then we can use the difference in the engine speed. And the specifications of the engine to calculate how much fuel we save. And we did a couple of different runs in a couple of different directions to make sure we weren't seeing the effects of the current or other what have you. And we were really pleasantly surprised that our little demonstrator sail provided 4 percent fuel savings in those conditions on that vessel.

And, that's not to say that you'll always get 4%, but absolutely nothing in the system was optimized. The sail is a little small for that vessel. It was our first pass at the technology. So there's still a huge amount of overhead for us to optimize. And I was just... Really excited by, by that number.

Abigail: And relieved. 

Miles: And relieved, yeah, uh, I was not really expecting to see much, um, measurable impact at all, given the size of the sail and the vessel, et cetera.

Abigail: Oh, that that just must have been a great moment for you. Huge feather in your cap. So, so what's next? How, and how are you funding this? Like, how, how do you keep this going while you figure out all the sort of the product? 

Miles: So, uh, after that test, we've gotten a grant through Mass CEC 

it's the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. They're a quasi governmental group in Massachusetts that really has some great programs for startups and great programs for clean energy, and they've been really great to work with so far. That grant is funding some automation work so that we... can take the person out of the loop and have our quarter scale demonstrator work, you know, in a completely automated way. So, we've been doing that over the summer and in August we installed a bunch of the upgrades on the prototype and now we're working through the debugging and commissioning phase.

Once that's all up and running, We will be looking to put this on a variety of vessels, um, still in the small, 50 to a hundred foot range. So if any of your listeners happen to know or own a vessel and would like to do some testing, I would love to be in touch. Beyond that, the next phase is scaling this up to a full scale pilot unit.

One that will actually make a noticeable impact on a vessel the size of our target vessel, and be a first pass at real production grade hardware, and the real production grade control systems with all the safety and redundancy that we expect. So that we can get approval and principle from class and actually run longer scale testing to prove that this works in the long term. 

Abigail: Interesting. So just kind of out of curiosity. You know, in Portland this year, we had David Geffen's, like, 400 foot long private yacht parked out in the harbor for a long time. Whenever we get these big yachts, the Portland Press Herald, like, announces, you know, whose yacht it is, and they sit there and everybody, like, It's sort of in awe and also like hates, you know, sort of despising this, um, this big vessel.

you out, you know, fit one of these huge yachts and help someone like David Geffen save money on fuel? I feel like these... These very wealthy people are sometimes leaders in green thinking. And if you could outfit a few yachts like that, you might, it might just be good proof of concept and, and frankly, PR. 

Miles: Yeah. Um, if you know David, I would love it. I'd love an intro. Um, absolutely. So the cool thing about the rigid wing is that it's pretty straightforward to adapt to any kind of vessel. And super yachts are one area where wind propulsion has a couple of installations: There's the Black Pearl, which has a DynaRig on it, which is sort of a really cool modern square rig design.

Abigail: Oh, interesting. 

Miles: The sailing yachts so far all have some version of cloth sails, and the question is, do cloth sails make sense in the sailing yacht context? Does someone want, or would someone rather have the performance and efficiency of a rigid wing? Um, yeah, the short answer is absolutely, and, and let's do it.

Abigail: I'll call, I'll call David. Um, so just getting back to your, your actual target market. Cause I took us a little off track there. you know, you got 4 percent with Matt Moretti on his Bang Island boat with a 15 foot sail, your target is a 60 foot sail and multiple on a vessel, right? Like, what kind of fuel savings are you hoping for?

Miles: in the modeling that we've done, I'll give you an example because it gets pretty specific. So on a medium sized platform supply vessel running a route from Rhode Island out to Vineyard Wind and back, we estimated with two units, you could save 6 to 12%. And that depends on, you know, that depends on a lot of the factors and primarily depends on how much you use the sails.

Abigail: Okay. I like to ask people just the general question: Are you optimistic about the future and our ability to stay ahead of this climate pressure?

Miles: So, I've thought a lot about this. On the somber side, it certainly seems to me like we've crossed into the adapting to climate change regime as opposed to the avoiding climate change regime, but that doesn't actually make me pessimistic. I completely believe in our abilities as humans to solve problems.

It's all depending on where we put our collective focus. So when we focus our energy on a challenge, we pretty much always solve it. And a critical piece to adapting to or fighting climate change is to dedicate enough attention towards mitigating it. For a long enough period of time that we actually make progress.

and podcasts like this are one way to do that. I do think that it's important to move from talking into action. I feel like we've been, we've been talking for decades and now the problems that we're starting to see in the climate are becoming acute enough that we need to move into action. And in some respects, it matters less what action, because we can always change.

And maybe that's the entrepreneurial mindset, but, I think that sometimes we get bogged down in trying to find the right approach and that it's faster if we go boldly in a direction and then change if we need to. 

Abigail: That might answer my next question as well, which was before, before leaving, did you have any advice for entrepreneurs today?

Miles: so over the last year, this is the earliest stage company that I've ever worked in and so it's become really apparent to me that enthusiasm and persistence count way more than experience. So I would say if there's a new entrepreneur, find people who are enthusiastic and find people who will stick with you. Find other entrepreneurs and build a support group. There's a lot of mythology and misconceptions about what it's like to found a company and what it's like to have the role of a founder. And it can be really challenging to relate to people who don't have that experience or for people who don't have experience to relate. And so finding other people with that same experience has been really, really helpful for me.

Abigail: I can completely understand that. Well, thank you so much for coming today, Miles. This has just been really interesting. Is there anything that you would, you'd like to say that's on your mind that we haven't gotten to? 

Miles: Only that I would like to reiterate that we're coming up on a period of time where we'll be wanting to test our little demonstrator prototype on a variety of vessels. And, if anybody listening owns or has a connection to one, I would love to be in touch because it would be immensely helpful to gather as much data as we can with our little sail on as many vessels as we can.

Abigail: So what are your, what are the parameters you need for that? Just be clear. Like what is like, is that a lobster boat? Could that work? Or is it, you know, what are the sizes? 

Miles: Yeah, um, anything 50 to 100 feet. We need about 6 feet by 20 feet of deck space and the sail has about a 26 foot air draft when it's, when it's raised. And during testing, you can go about your operations like you normally do. And we can, uh, with our new systems that we've upgraded, we can log data automatically and estimate all kinds of performance parameters around the sails, so we don't even need to, um, do dedicated testing. Although doing dedicated testing like we did with Bangs Island Muscles was really, really helpful as well.

Abigail: Well, we will put that in our show notes and all of our PR, we'll try to get some, get people to pass, spread the word for you. Uh, but thanks so much. This has been super interesting and I wish you well this, this really imaginative and uh, exciting project. 

Miles: Well, thank you for having us on. This was a wonderful conversation.

Abigail: Thank you, Miles, for joining us today and sharing your story. This is a surprising evolution in marine transportation, but one that's compatible with other types of renewables, like hydrogen. If you'd like to know more about Aloft, you can visit their website at www.aloft.Systems. I will put this information in the show notes.

Thank you once again for listening. Please follow Happy Planet wherever you tune in and leave us a rating and review. It really does help new listeners discover the show. Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me, Abigail Carroll.

I am also the executive producer. The talented Matt Patterson is our producer and editor. Composer George Brandl Egloff created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetpodcast.com.