Ulstein and EDGE looking into hydrogen fuel cells for X-Bow

Norway’s maritime start-up EDGE Navigation and shipbuilder Ulstein are evaluating the use of a hydrogen fuel cell solution to achieve non-fossil propulsion for a container vessel concept.

The companies are cooperating on an X-BOW container vessel concept design for green energy power solutions.

They teamed up with ABB to develop this solution on the basis of fuel cells from Ballard Power Systems, a developer and manufacturer of proton exchange membrane fuel cell products.

“Developing a new efficient design for container vessels incorporating the ULSTEIN X-BOW will facilitate the transition to green energy propulsion for containerships. At EDGE Navigation we have the ambition to bring economic and scalable non-fossil fuelled containerships to the market by 2025 and with Ulstein’s innovative approach we will have the flexibility in design to adapt the vessels to the charterers’ choice of fuel,” said Jakob Tolstrup-Møller, managing director – CEO at EDGE Navigation.

“The commercial shipping share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has reached about 3 per cent. Declining cost of renewable energy and technology enables us to develop new efficient designs that will facilitate the energy transition in the maritime industry. The paradigm shift in energy used for maritime fuel will be inevitable. Any effort to reduce the global GHG emissions must also include investment into reducing GHG emissions in the global supply chain,” he added.