In 2017, Sør-Trøndelag County Council in Norway decided to take action to lower the emissions of the public ferry services, in support of achieving the County’s climate goals. Six speedboats emit the same amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) as 1000 busses. In 2018-2019, together with 10 other Counties, Trøndelag conducted a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) to challenge the market to develop emission free high speed ferry boats. Five consortia delivered on the challenge and the Counties are now preparing to procure the new emission free boat services.

Five consortia started the competition beginning 2018: Brødrene Aa, NTNU Technology Transfer / Flying Foil, Rødne Trafikk AS, Transportutvikling AS and Selfa Arctic AS. The 5 consortia brought together a variety of expertise to come up with an end-to-end solution that tackles the problem from all angles: ship builders, designers, engineering companies, system integrators, energy companies, operators etc.

The five consortia came up with different ways to address the problem: they proposed different types and configurations of renewable electricity that ranged from pure battery to pure hydrogen to hybrid hydrogen / battery solutions. All solutions were so promising that they all made it through to the final testing in the summer of 2019.

The tests that were conducted in the summer of 2019 showed that it will indeed be possible for the Counties to buy emission free express boats in their upcoming call for tenders, some of which are already under preparation.

For more information about the PCP, click here.