The container ferry Birkeland is a special kind of electric utility vehicle. The 80 m long ship can transport 120 containers of 20 feet in length. This should save 40,000 truck trips per year and thus 1,000 tons of CO2 emissions.
In future, the Birkeland will run several times a week between the factory of the Norwegian fertilizer manufacturer Yara and the port in Brevik. It is powered by a 7 MWh battery (equivalent to the output of 100 luxury electric car batteries) and reaches a speed of 15 knots.
The new electric container ship is one of the many efforts of the Yarla Group to reduce the CO2 footprint on the way to complete climate neutrality. That is why the Norwegian state has subsidized the construction of the Birkeland with the equivalent of EUR 13 million (NOK 133 million).
Even if the Birkeland will sail with a crew for the next 2 years, this is only necessary to monitor the systems in the test phase and to be able to intervene in an emergency situation. The ship is fully prepared for autonomous operation without a crew. In addition to saving personnel costs, the manufacturer hopes that this will result in higher security, since humans errors will be eliminated asa source for accidents.