| By Todd Woody Across the far reaches of the ocean, hundreds of yellow, beach ball-sized buoys called Spotters bob in the swell, silently measuring surface temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure and wave height. The real-time data they collect alerts cargo ship captains of the best routes to cut their carbon emissions. At the waterfront offices of San Francisco startup Sofar Ocean, which makes the Spotters, a large wall screen displays the locations of the buoys and client ships as they crisscross the globe. As one owned by Singapore-based Berge Bulk rounds the Cape of Good Hope, Sofar’s service notifies the captain that adjusting the vessel’s trajectory to take advantage of a nearby ocean current would save $13,000 in fuel costs and reduce the journey’s carbon emissions by 11 metric tons.  A rack of Spotter smart buoys at Sofar’s waterfront headquarters in San Francisco. Photographer: Christie Hemm Klok for Bloomberg Green About a thousand cargo ships subscribe to the forecasting service, called Wayfinder, which incorporates data collected by more than 500 Spotters spread over the open ocean. “Wayfinder has proven to be very accurate in forecasting and route optimization,” says James Marshall, Berge Bulk’s chief executive officer. “It’s a very integral part of our operations now, and a key way of reducing our carbon footprint.” Route optimization is one of the technologies shipping companies are embracing as regulatory pressures grow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an industry that transports more than 80% of the international trade in goods and generates 3% of global emissions. With the conversion of shipping fleets to low-carbon fuels likely years if not decades away, ship owners are also installing high-tech sails on cargo carriers and testing onboard carbon capture systems. Moves to limit ships’ greenhouse gas emissions are spurring the adoption of such technologies. The International Maritime Organization, the shipping industry’s global regulator, on Friday approved draft rules mandating reductions in vessel emissions. The European Union in January began imposing a surcharge on ships that don’t meet its emissions standards.  At Sofar’s San Francisco offices, technicians assemble Spotter smart buoys. Photographer: Christie Hemm Klok for Bloomberg Green Sofar’s technology is designed to provide more information than what satellites and other ocean monitoring platforms can do from afar. The Spotters generate real-time maritime observations that allow ship captains to make small changes in their routes that can add up to significant savings in fuel and emissions. “The ocean is a large place and you need lots of data to make a better weather forecast,” says Tim Janssen, Sofar’s chief executive officer. Sofar’s Wayfinder service — what Janssen calls “Google maps for ships” — crunches data beamed to the cloud by the Spotters. Wayfinder incorporates the real-time data on ocean conditions into its weather models and then customizes a continuously updated forecast for each vessel, predicting fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, that a captain can see on a web app or gets via email.  The Berge Olympus equipped with WindWing sails in Cape Town, South Africa. Courtesy: Berge Bulk Up-to-the-minute weather data has become even more crucial as Berge Bulk and other carriers install sails on their ships. Unlike the canvas sails of 19th-century clipper ships, these sails are rigid, resembling vertical aircraft wings. And like airplane wings, they capture lift from the wind to propel a ship forward, reducing the amount of fuel burned to maintain speed. Berge Bulk in 2023 retrofitted a 211,000-tonne cargo carrier with four, 123-foot-tall (37.5 meters) WindWings sails, saving six metric tons of fuel and 20 metric tons of CO2 per journey in good weather. Those benefits, though, depend on knowing in real time which way the wind is blowing, where and when. “The direction of wind is really important,” says Marshall. “It can be quite a light wind but in the right direction, it’ll provide really good thrust.” Among the more cutting-edge technologies that Berge Bulk and other shipping lines are trialing is onboard capture and storage of a vessel’s CO2 emissions. In March, Dutch company Value Maritime announced it had installed technology on a Japanese cargo ship that removes 10% of the CO2 from the ship exhaust and stores it in a tank until it can be offloaded in port for re-use or permanent storage. Berge Bulk also has begun testing Value Maritime’s technology on one of its ships, hoping to capture 30% of emissions. Startups Seabound in the UK and Carbon Ridge in Los Angeles are developing variations on Value Marine’s approach. Another LA startup, Calcarea, is testing technology designed to strip CO2 from smokestack emissions and transform it into a bicarbonate, a common marine salt, that is disposed of at sea as the ship traverses the ocean.  The prototype of Calcarea’s onboard carbon capture system at the Port of Los Angeles. Courtesy: Calcarea For Marshall, the long-term return on investment for most of the technologies Berge Bulk is trying out on its ships, including a new initiative to install solar panels to power onboard systems, remains to be seen. But with regulatory mandates and the company’s commitment to operating a zero-emission fleet by 2050, the company isn’t betting on any single solution. “I really have two levers to decarbonize and one is to make my existing ships more efficient and the other is to either use a zero-carbon fuel or to capture the carbon that I emit,” he says. For a more in-depth look at new maritime emissions-cutting technology, read the full story on Bloomberg.com. | 
