Mission to power ferries and boats with hydrogen power

OceansLab founder Phil Sharp used a £350,000 grant from Jersey's government to develop a hydrogen-powered sailing boat

A Jersey yachtsman hopes to reduce the maritime industry's emissions by using hydrogen power to fuel boats and ferries.

Ocean racer Phil Sharp has used an £347,000 grant from the States of Jersey to develop a hydrogen-powered sailing boat.

The plan now is for his company, OceansLab, to scale this sustainable technology to larger vessels, including ferries.

"I have always been keen to push a new clean tech that we can adapt to the marine environment," he said.

"This is the moment to try and kick-start the industry to demonstrate technologies that we can embrace for like inter-island ferries but also short sea shipping and longer-term, deep-sea shipping," he said.

"My goal is to get this technology into real vessels and ships as quickly as possible in order to reduce the detrimental effect we are seeing from the maritime sector."

OceanLab uses hydrogen fuel cells and solar panels.

He said the company was currently trying to commercialise the technology in order to have a "greater environmental impact" and has recently moved into a production centre to start creating and assembling the technology to use.

Mr Sharp also said the company has been visiting schools to teach them about clean energy on the island.