Secretary General, International Windship Association (IWSA)
Gavin Allwright has been active as a maritime decarbonisation consultant since 2005, originally working with a not-for-profit organisation designing zero-emissions, sail/solar electric hybrid vessels for developing countries and this project led to his election as the founding Secretary General of the International Windship Association (IWSA) when that was established in 2014 which he continues in post today. This not-for-profit grouping of over 200 maritime wind propulsion companies and projects supported by academia, NGO’s and seafarers is working to promote and facilitate the uptake of wind propulsion solutions in commercial shipping. He heads the IWSA delegation at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) where the organisation holds consultative status, along with sitting on the European Sustainable Shipping Forum and until recently also on the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Maritime Technology Cooperation Centres (MTCC) stakeholder’s advisory committee. He is also a non-executive board member on the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA). These positions mean that Gavin has a wide overview of the maritime policy and decarbonisation spheres and in particular how these apply to small island, SIDS and LDC regions.
He has also recently been an advisor on a number of EU and international joint industry and research projects, including: WASP, IMO CARES, WiSP1-3, STEERER, Decarbonising UK Freight and he has worked closely with the Oceania (now Micronesian) Centre for Sustainable Shipping on the development of a sustainable shipping network in the South Pacific and gained extensive knowledge of the small vessel sector from his work as the Commercial Director for the Greenheart project, a not-for-profit organisation he joined in 2005, designing a zero-emissions, sail/solar electric cargo vessel for least developed regions.
Gavin holds a Masters degree in Sustainable Development, specialising in small scale sustainable shipping and logistics in developing countries. He lectures on the development of wind propulsion and sustainable shipping as a visiting lecturer at a number of universities, including the UN World Maritime University, Malmo, Sweden. He has contributed to numerous studies and projects on alternative propulsion solutions and helped coordinate and contributed extensively to the UN-affiliated IRENA technical brief – Renewable Energy Options in Shipping, more recently he is the lead contributor for the Wind propulsion report, submitted as MEPC81 INF.39 and some years ago contributed as an expert reviewer on the first IPCC Special Report on 1.5C Global Warming.