The first day of the Superyacht Design Symposium and it had all the ingredients of a great event. The Plaza Hotel is an excellent venue; old world class in the New World heart of New York. It was obviously strategically placed, to be just close enough to Central Park to bask in the reflection of the rich colours of Autumn, whilst being on a street that does not suffer too much with the relentless traffic of panting, sweaty, lycra clad joggers. The food was great and they even have reasonable tea which is just the sort of thing that make the day of an Englishman in New York.
The principal topics that were presented, relate to the Greenness of yachts. Discussion centered around the contention that Yachts could be greener. Well no arguments there. What was interesting is that there is clearly a concensus developing in the specific areas where yachts can become more environmentally friendly. Broadly the areas seem to be:
POWER TRAIN
Introducing more efficient engine to propeller set ups.
HULL DESIGN
Much talk was about the different available hull shapes and their respective benefits to economic cruising. In short there is fat and voluminous or long and thinner. These are relative concepts of course but up 20% gains were mentioned as possible through more efficient hull forms.
ALTERNATIVE POWER
Many forms were mentioned: Solar panels, Hybrid systems and fuel cells. However I have to say my favourite alternative power source, and, it seemed the favourite of most people in the expansive, gold laden ball room were, wait for it, sails. They are really excellent at helping yachts be more environmentally efficient.
REDUCING POWER CONSUMPTION
Cutting down seemed to be able save up to 20% of the power requirements of your average large yacht.
It is good to see areas of concensus brought up and largely agreed upon by different actors with different but mostly commercial viewpoints. For me this is progress as it keeps green issues in the mainstream. However, there was one slight omission in my opinion. One of the issues that was raised was the cost of new technology and how long it might take to see a return, even when valued at the subjective reckoning of a yacht’s owner. In actual fact one of the contributing speakers was a large yacht owner.
If you look at what savings were thought to be made by cutting back power use you will see it is almost as much as completely modernizing hull form. The cutting back process was characterized by one of the presenters as having a “Green Button” which would be set to a number of default settings that would reduce lighting, reduce AC temperature, thereby reducing the power draw on the generators etc etc etc.
Now call me old fashioned, but aren’t there about 8 Green Buttons on your average 40 something metre megayacht. For me then the only omission made in today’s meeting was to forget the input of the crew in Green Yachting. It would seem possible that a well trained crew could in fact reduce the ‘carbon keelprint’ by up to 20%.
Again yacht crew could arguably be the ‘X” factor in the process of making yachts better for their owners. The only difference is that if we are going to measure the environmental benefits against the dollar, then crew may have a tangible value and who knows, maybe even a new bonus structure? Imagine salary reviews based on the amount of Litres per mile a crew achieved?
It may sound crazy but who ever thought that sails would be cited as the most beneficial contributor to reducing the Carbon Keelprint of a megayacht?