BRITTANY TO MARTINIQUE BY HYDROGEN AND SAIL
Not many kilometres from Guernsey’s shores at a well-known place called Finistère (The “Land’s End” of France), this unique renewable-energy-powered boat left Europe in April initially setting sail from its home St Malo. Nine thousand kilometres later after 34 days the Energy Observer arrived in the Caribbean. This floating laboratory is developing and actively making happen a new energy model that will transcend fossil fuels and nuclear energy proving that using only the wind, sun and hydrogen its possible to not only cross the Atlantic but power all of human activity.
Its mission is to visit 101 ports around the world and so far there has been 50 stopovers and 23,000 nautical miles have been travelled. It seems likely from this Facebook post it once visited Sark! Follow its Odyssey. Toyota have supplied the hydrogen side of the equation and seawater around the vessel is desalinated, and electrolysed to power the 114kW fuel cell and propeller. There are 8 x hydrogen tanks with storage of 83kG of the gas. The vessel can be direct solar-powered also by its using duel-sided solar panels and has lithium battery packs. The solar electricity creates the hydrogen. A new type of sail called Oceanwings also helps to move the boat on its world-wide journey. “More than a boat, Energy Observer is a model for energy networks of the future: digitized, decarbonized and decentralized.”
Captain and founder Victorien Erussard was interviewed from on board and had this to say (they left before the pandemic lockdown and had to deal with it on the way, unable to land anywhere): “This crisis is as much ecological as it is health-related, and warns us while at the same time offering us a unique opportunity to move forward and build a fairer world.”