Cross River Zero Emissions Ferry

This partnership positions the UK to deliver the best intelligent electric propulsion and power management solutions in the world supporting the UK Maritime Industry with the UK Governments Net Zero 2050 initiative.

The project is a co-ordinated initiative that brings together key partners who have a proven track record of delivering zero emission solutions into the maritime sector. This feasibility study will look at the relationship between power demand, duty cycle and vessel optimisation for more efficient vessel operation.

Whilst current solutions are looking at optimising individual components, this study will go further to reduce overall power demand providing further opportunity for emissions reductions helping the vessel to limit its energy waste. We will also look at the benefits of autonomous mode controls that, when applied autonomously to the system, may help reduce the overall power demand in varying conditions including automated mooring where power demand can increase unnecessarily.

This will help deliver new technologies in marine digital controls and connected solutions and will benefit the UK Marine industry. These solutions can be applied to vessel designs for installation into operational locations throughout the UK and the World. The development of shore-based infrastructure which is required to achieve high power rapid charging and automated mooring will be a key focus of this project as will the compliance of the system to current maritime regulations with the partnership seeking guidance and support from the MCA and PLA.

The project will enable the UK maritime industry to develop system solutions that are optimised for new vessels that operate on the Inland Waterways which demonstrate the importance of intelligent controls, which may lead to the implementation of varying levels of vessel autonomy and show how they can play a key role in full electric solutions in accordance with the Clean Maritime Plan.

This feasibility study is necessary to help deliver highly complex intelligent propulsion solutions into optimised vessels for the UK and to help develop a clear plan for a future prototype vessel that provides data from an operational location and shows clear economic and technological feasibility to achieve Net Zero by 2050\.

In support of a clear and costed plan for a demonstrator, as part of our report, we will define a clear business case for viable adoption of the technology and report any barriers that we identify that would need to be overcome.