Last spring, the American Bureau of Shipping convened their first sustainability conference for the yacht industry in Monaco in an effort to share knowledge of the industry’s ongoing efforts to promote sustainability in yachts.
Experts in their respective fields discussed efforts to develop alternative fuels, how to create more efficient electrical systems, where the development of fuel-cell technology is leading and more.
It was agreed that the yacht industry had to take a public stand on sustainability since yachts are leisure craft and yachting is often considered by the general public to be wasteful and a prime source of carbon emissions.
As technology is developed at the major yacht builders, expertise and methodologies need to be shared, the group agreed, so they could innovate in an open-source format. Duplicating efforts in closed tech silos would only serve to delay innovation and development of the needed technologies.
In the medium-size yacht market companies like Greenline, Silent Yachts and other are pushing ahead with green and hybrid technologies. These companies and others will certainly benefit from and contribute to the overall efforts to develop sustainable yachts.
Read more in Boat International here.
