Once upon a time, every ship that travelled from the old world to the new was 100% renewably powered. It was slow and dangerous, but it was green power.

Then, when fossil fuels took over, sea travel got a lot faster and a lot safer. But it also became a huge source of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Wind power was considered slow and out-dated.

Recently, someone decided that a boat could, in fact, be powered by both sails and gas. The result would be a boat that was just as fast, but burned far less fuel.

Well, that boat just arrived in Venezuela, and it was a success. Using a parachute-shaped kite sail, the boat travelled across the Atlantic from Germany. The sail was deployed when it was windy (between eight hours and five minutes per day) and was retracted when there wasn't enough wind.

The result: a 20% fuel savings on the round-trip journey from Europe to South America and back again.

Once the sales are installed and a is crew trained on their use, they are free. In contrast, diesel has to be continually purchased. So, if the cost of the sails isn't too outrageous, shipping companies could be saving money and the environment in very short order.

The next steps are to make bigger sails suitable for larger ships. And to get shipping companies to buy the things...

Via CNET Clean Tech