Tokyo maritime companies Tokyo Kisen and Marindows have launched what they claim to be Japan’s first pure-battery-powered harbour tugboat development project. Tokyo Kisen offers maritime safety, tugboat, passenger ship and logistics services in Tokyo Bay and beyond, while Marindows was founded in 2021 by e5 Lab to push maritime environmental sustainability through electrification and autonomous operations.
The plans for the vessel, which is scheduled to service the ports of Yokohama and Kawasaki, were drawn up in accordance with the Carbon Neutral Port (CNP) policy, an initiative created by Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in domestic port operations by 2050.
The partners aim to commence construction of the tug in 2028 and to put it into commercial service by 2030. The vessel will feature two 1,500kW propulsion units and an onboard battery capacity of 6.66MWh, which should enable a maximum bollard pull (bp) of 53tonnes and a speed of approximately 14knots. The vessel has also been designed to work with a pair of 1,000kW-class shore-to-ship fast chargers, for minimum disruption to operations.
This set-up will improve on the hybrid-electric tugboat Taiga, which Tokyo Kisen put into service in January 2023, and which featured a 2,486kWh-capacity battery. “Building on 2.5 years of operating experience with electric-powered tugs, this project advances to the next stage—enabling truly zero-CO2 operations—by developing and constructing a pure battery-powered EV tugboat,” Tokyo Kisen comments.
