Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. today announced that its owned and operated Shofu Maru, the world's first coal carrier equipped with the Wind Challenger hard sail wind propulsion system, has completed a total of seven round-trip voyages to Japan, mainly from Australia, Indonesia, North America, as a dedicated coal transport vessel for Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc.
Over the course of about 18 months since the Shofu Maru's delivery in October 2022, MOL has measured the performance of the Wind Challenger continuously on actual voyages, and confirmed that the Wind Challenger sail reduced daily fuel consumption by up to 17%, and by 5% to 8% per voyage on average, as announced before.
MOL has set the target of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 in the "MOL Group Environmental Vision 2.2." Among the main actions to achieve this target is the "introduction of further energy-saving technologies," and the group plans to launch 25 vessels equipped with the Wind Challenger by 2030, increasing to 80 by 2035.