"Turning wind into profit” – Stephan Wrage couldn’t have chosen a better slogan for his project, which at first glance sounds more like a beachboy’s dream than a successful business idea. Or does the concept of taking kytes (so far only known from the watersport “kyte surfing”), attaching them to massive cargo ships in order to reduce their gas consumption sound realistic to you?

The German engineer proved all the pessimists around him wrong by turning his vision into reality with his company SkySails located in Hamburg. His literally biggest success: this summer the first 140 meter long cargo ship will conquer the open sea equipped with one of Wrage’s Skysails.
The owners of that ship simply got convinced by numbers: Given optimal weather and wind conditions fuel costs can be lowered by the most 50 percent, the least 10 – 35 percent (in a yearly average). Taken the finite oil resources into account experts estimate that the oil price could rise from 40 $ a barrel to 120 $ a barrel till 2030. In this light the hybrid system of conventional power and wind energy provided by SkySail provides a real advantage in the competitive shipping business in the long run. That justifies the investment of between 500.000 - 2.5 million euros for a SkySail.

Ship owners are not the only ones thinking that the concept has a future. The project gets funding by the EU and the German government. The UN also recommends using SkySails in light of climate change and the massive amount of CO2-emissions (approx. 600 – 800 m tonnes) shipping contributes overall – in comparison twice as much than aviation worldwide.

Stephan Wrage even has good news for all the owners of luxurious yachts among us: kytes in smaller versions are also available – easy to install you get the speed of a motor boat but not the sound. That’s called selling a product – for the greater good of saving the environment. Right on!
Fotos: Website

It is not an open secret that the mega-cities of today already keep almost the majority of the world’s population. New is a number of the United Nations, revealed in t New York Times report recently: By 2030 5 billion people will live in cities and town around the world. This means that the migration into cities has not come to an end yet.

Gabarone, the Capital of Botswana, is expected to grow up to 500 000 inhabitants by 2030. In 1971 there were just 18 000As the UN point out it is not the already existing mega-city like Mexico-City, Sao Paolo or Calcutta that will extraordinary grow but the mid-sized ones like Gabarone or Botswana. Here the population will raise from 18 000 inhabitants in 1971 to 500 000 in 2030. In cities like Calcutta and others of that size more people move our then in.

The skyline of Sao Paolo
One thing that pricks up one’s ears is the fact that by 2030 developing nations will have 80 percent of the world’s urban population. While star architects in the Western world like Sir Norman Foster think about sustainable cities in the future with social areas, public transport infrastructure and roof gardens there is no way that these growing cities can adopt those ideas and set into practice until 2030. The opposite will be the case: The growing of urban slums will pollute watersheds. The struggle for clean water, for water in general, will be fought in these urban areas. The simple standards of living – like missing sanitation - there will threat the whole environmental structure of these cities.

Slum in Calcutta

It has been one of those meetings were you have two days to go deeper into the topics than within a telephone or video conference. 27 Ministers of Environment from the European Union gathered in Essen, Nordrhein-Westphalia to discuss the climate politics of the continent for the next years.Club of Pioneers was there, meeting with Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Achim Steiner and Alex Goerlach
Steiner worked with the worldwide largest Environmental Protection NGO,the IUCN in Washington (D.C.) and Asia before he became Secretary General of World Commission on Dams (WCD) in Capetown. Jeremy Rifkin is the founder and CEO of Foundation on Economic Trends. In now 17 books he wrote about the changes in development, technique and the labor processes. He is an observer of the consumer society. His books are translated into 20 languages.

Jeremy Rifkin and Alex GoerlachBoth Rifkin and Steiner agreed to speak in upcoming posts of Club of Pioneers about their work and their vision for a sustainable future. During the conference they were introduced into the Hydrogen 7 of BMW and the company's vision of a future Hydrogen powered world.