Cost Effiency of the Project
The condition of European fishing is critical. The trawlers have become obsolete. Spain has launched a program in 2008, “Generic Ship” which plans by 2020 a new generation of efficient and economical fishing boats. The French climate plan intends the “Vessel of the future” in a similar timeframe. The budget from start up to prototype building is estimated on € 40M.
• In order to survive during this interval, the fishermen can only upgrade their current vessels. By introducing the hybridization, F2E shows the ship-owners that the rebuilding of the energy system is an attainable investment with reference to the exploitation costs. The objective of this project is for F2E to enforce weakened companies and the related loss of employment in the 2Seas region.
• The availability for the researchers of trial vessels entitled to simulate specific trawlers energy missions is rare and expensive. It currently requires chartering a vessel not always accurately adapted to the experimental purpose, to hire the full crew or provide redundancy, and compensate for the loss of profitability. F2E project’s lowers the upstream R&D costs as the “lab-vessel” designed to welcome any specific experimental non usual gear, allows a large number of technical attendants to board in, and does not requires compensation for losses.
• On the demonstration vessel, the cuts on petrol expenses due to the use of alternative fuel, added to the multiple energetic optimizations of the hybrid cinematic and power chain, combined with the income of the fish catch, are expected to neutralize after a while the experiment compensation expenses.
• At the end of the project a comparative financial analysis of the direct and indirect effects between will be conducted, matching F2E project figures with the evaluations of the impact of the EU/FEP program subsidies to fishing vessels re-motorization.