'You can’t use salt water, as that makes it worse, which we saw in an incident on the battery hybrid ferry Ytterøyningen last year. 'The best thing you can do when a battery like this is on fire at 1,600C is submerge it in fresh water and wait until the fire burns itself out underwater,' he stresses. Stories of the Galaxy Note 7 model catching fire and even exploding were all over the news that year, and Mr Malterud says we would do well to remember this when developing similar lithium batteries for ships. 'We need special firefighting equipment and crew training that is quite different from what they get at the moment.'Īlthough there have thankfully been no major accidents on the few fully battery-powered vessels already in operation, one incident we should be learning from is the 2016 case of Samsung's overheating smartphones. 'The problem is that we don’t have international standards for battery-powered vessels, which are fine almost all the time but can be very dangerous if something goes wrong,' he points out. And he's very keen to see that crew safety is prioritised as fully-electric propulsion becomes more widespread. But we must do it safely, and we must have unions around the table.'Īs assistant director and technical manager for his union, Mr Malterud often speaks for seafarers at the International Maritime Organization (IMO). 'It's the future – especially for shortsea shipping and inland waterways,' says Odd Rune Malterud of the Norwegian Union of Marine Engineers. They can also help to reduce CO2 levels in the world's atmosphere, as long as the electricity used to charge them is generated by renewables such as wind, solar or hydroelectric power. Like electric cars, battery-powered ships provide a way of improving air quality where they operate – doing away with the SOx, NOx and particulate pollution associated with diesel engines. Sarah Robinson finds out how the coming electric revolution looksįrom the perspective of a Nautilus Federation union That urgent work is required on safety standards, firefighting equipment and crew To play an important part in this clean-up effort, but seafarer representatives say Industry to cut its emissions has not gone away.
While we've all been preoccupied with the pandemic, the need for the shipping
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