The Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD), AIM Horizon Investments and Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) said on 20 October that they have arranged financing for two wind-assisted propulsion system (WAPS) projects through the Fund for Energy Efficiency Technologies (FEET), marking the fund’s first deployment.

FEET links verified fuel and regulatory savings from energy efficiency technologies (EETs) installed on vessels to a pay-as-you-save mechanism. The fund offers up to 100% upfront financing through a blended finance structure, and it is managed by AIM Horizon Investments, with GCMD acting as the fund's decarbonisation adviser. FEET is also supported by the Development Bank of Japan, DBS Bank and ING.

The financing will support wind-assisted propulsion systems installed on board the MV Pacific Sentinel and MV Pacific Sunstone. Each vessel has three 22-metre suction sails fitted, making them the first ships in the EPS fleet to use WAPS.

The deployment builds on earlier work between GCMD and EPS, which led to the development of a methodology for quantifying fuel savings from the WAPS installed on board the MV Pacific Sentinel. To isolate the retrofit's impact from changes in operating conditions, GCMD said it collected 276 million data points over four months of spot-market trading in the Americas, from mid-May to mid-September 2025. From these, 203 valid on-off transitions were screened to quantify performance, according to GCMD.

Going forward, FEET is to apply this methodology — which has been reviewed by an independent third party — to determine fuel savings for the WAPS projects it finances. Project data will be audited, and the calculated fuel savings independently verified. These verified savings will then be used to determine payments from shipowners, according to the organisations.

Professor Lynn Loo, CEO of GCMD, stated: "Scaling EETs depends not just on proving that they work, but on establishing how much fuel they save under real-world operating conditions. With a methodology now in place to quantify those savings, FEET's first projects with EPS take the next step: testing how pay-as-you-save financing works in practice, by linking payments to verified fuel savings. This is how we aim to turn operational evidence into investor confidence and unlock wider adoption of EETs across fleets."

Marcel de Bruijckere, CEO of AIM Horizon Investments, commented: "Launching an innovative fund like FEET required a lot of effort, strong co-operation with GCMD and support by anchor investor Development Bank of Japan and debt providers ING and DBS Bank. The first deployment of FEET's capital makes all that hard work worth it and delivers the proof of its concept. We learned a lot from our interaction with the finance and technical teams of EPS and look forward to applying those lessons when making our next investments and scaling up the fund."

Cyril Ducau, CEO of EPS, remarked: "Decarbonisation moves faster when the technology, the data, and the financing come together. MV Pacific Sentinel has shown what wind-assisted propulsion can do in real operations, and we are pleased to now showcase this first FEET financing designed to assist shipowners wanting to invest in proven solutions. We look forward to seeing more energy-efficient technologies make their way onto ships."