Around 90 percent of global trade takes place by sea. Merchant shipping releases enormous amounts of CO2 and other pollutants. For 2015, the ICCT 932 million tons of CO2 equivalents, which accounted for around 2.6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions that year. Germany's greenhouse gas emissions that year amounted to 902 million tons CO2 equivalents.
Cargokite aims to solve this problem – and is relying on wind power. However, not in the form of traditional sails. Instead, the Munich-based company is developing a so-called Airborne Wind Energy System, the main component of which is a kite. This system is designed to fly at altitudes between 100 and 300 meters, where there is always sufficient wind to reliably propel the ship.
Cargokite relies on small autonomous ships with kite propulsion
At the same time, Cargokite is also addressing ship design. A redesigned hull is intended to enable wind energy to be harnessed more efficiently than ever before and directly converted into forward movement of the ship. However, this cannot power a Panamax ship – instead, the startup is focusing on smaller, autonomous models with a capacity of 16 containers. And since the ships don't need to carry fuel, they are even smaller. This should also make commercial shipping more flexible, as the small ships would no longer be dependent on particularly large ports.
With their concept, Cargokite founders Amelie Binder, Max Perschen, Tim Linnenweber and Marcus Bischoff have already been able to first and second round of the Munich Business Plan Competition. The American venture capital fund SOSV and the Fraunhofer Technology Transfer Fund (FTTF) have now joined the startup. The size of the pre-seed round was not disclosed. LinkedIn lets Cargokite knowledge:
"This is an important milestone for our rapidly growing company and a signal to the market that wind technologies will play a much larger role in the future of environmentally friendly shipping than is often portrayed. With SOSV and FTTF, we have found two experienced and hardware-savvy investors who will accompany us on our technically challenging path and help us reach the next milestones."
