<article><p class="lead">Japanese shipping firm Mitsui OSK Lines (Mol) and utility Tohoku Electric Power are advancing a project to build a wind-powered coal carrier to help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping. </p><p>Mol and Tohoku signed a long-term charger agreement today for a newbuild coal vessel equipped with a hard sail system or wind challenger. The deal came 14 months after the firms began studying installing a hard sail system on a coal carrier <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/1996247">last October</a>. The 99,000 deadweight tonne carrier will be built by Japan's Oshima Shipbuilding, with commissioning targeted for 2022. </p><p>The wind challenger technology can convert wind energy into propulsive force using a telescoping hard sail. This is expected to cut a vessel's GHG emissions by around 5pc on a Japan-Australia voyage and by around 8pc on a Japan-North America west coast voyage, compared with the same type of vessel without the hard sail system.</p><p>The new vessel may use conventional marine fuel oil. But it will be equipped with an exhaust gas removal system, or a scrubber, to comply with the International Maritime Organization's global 0.5pc sulphur cap on marine fuels, which came into force on 1 January.</p><p>Mol plans to transport coal to Tohoku's thermal power plants using the newbuild low-emission carrier for an unspecified period. Tohoku currently operates two coal-fired power plants, the 2,000MW Haramachi in Fukushima prefecture and 1,800MW Noshiro in Akita prefecture. The company used 4.63mn t of coal in April-September, the first half of its 2020-21 fiscal year, up by 21pc from a year earlier.</p><p class="bylines">By Motoko Hasegawa</p></article>
