The Research Council of Norway, Innovation Norway and Enova, a public company specialized in supporting green energy, are funding the first vessel, to run as a pilot project that manages the big-city commute with the smallest possible impact on air and water.

"The project objectives are reduced urban congestion, reduced emissions and reduced city infrastructure costs," explains Hege Økland, CEO at NCE Maritime CleanTech, an industrial consortium partner working on the project. "The Urban Water Shuttle will be launched in cities with coastline located close to water and waterways. The concept is therefore relevant for cities all over the world."

Aluminium construction is a priority because of the light weight and durability of the materials, but also because of its sustainability impact. The passenger ferries will be solar powered, with panels atop the passenger module, and they will run on cutting-edge tech that is meant to keep operations streamlined.

Here's the idea: Urban centers continue to grow across the globe, a trend that presents significant challenges in the fight to manage the negative effects of climate change. Yet most major cities are on the water – and that water, whether in Norway or Cote d'Ivoire, offers a transit solution that's usually underutilized.

Often, those waterways are shallow from a mariner's perspective, so the aluminium vessels need to be light and their design needs to be innovative. They need to be fast or else people won't rely on them for a daily commute, but of course the ferries need to be safe and aluminium offers the fire resistance that Urban Water Shuttle designers want to see in their ferries. Finally, they need to be affordable – yet another advantage of aluminium – and facilitate bike commuters or connect with buses and trains.

What's interesting about the Urban Water Shuttle is that it's planned without using any fixed points of land. In other words, the terminals are much like semi-permanent airplane boarding ramps. There's no big-ticket infrastructure to build stations, and the docks can be moved for greater efficiency or when urban demographics or commute patterns change. They're also modular, with three component pieces.

The passenger module and the cockpit module are separate elements that sit atop the technology module, so that the ferry units are less expensive to build and easier to maintain and replace when necessary. The passenger section can be reconfigured to serve various customer needs, while the cockpit at the front remains standard so that all of the command centers on the ferries are the same.

The technology module – the system's power center – relies on battery and hydrogen fuel cells in a hybrid system. It also uses the latest propulsion and automation technologies, within a hull that's specially designed for optimal hydrodynamics.

An NCE Maritime CleanTech video shows off the interior design, meant to convey the same "jump on, jump off" mentality that buses or trains elicit, rather than the aversion that comes with thinking that a traditional ferry ride is a long and sometimes arduous journey. Once the prototype is built, the Urban Water Shuttle will be tested in Norwegian cities to see how real people experience the ride.

The concept is being developed by a joint industrial partnership from the business cluster NCE Maritime CleanTech: Wärtsilä, Fjellstrand, Servogear, Grenland Energy, CFD Marine, Sapa and Hydro.