Growing up as I did in an old seafaring town, quite near Ahab's ports of call, I love the romance of the sea and I listen exclusively to sea chanties.
For low-value and bulk cargo, ships make sense, and modern computer-controlled sail trim and wind energy harvesting probably makes a great case. But high value cargo is largely today shipped by air. Nvidia wants money for its chips ASAP, too valuable to sit around non productively while being steamered. Maybe with surplus wind energy they could mine bitcoin while en route?
A sort of related topic, about 20 years ago during peak farm-to-table "buy local" fashion, the NY Times pointed out that lamb shipped from New Zealand (where is that on a map, I can't find it?) to New York City arrives with a lower carbon footprint than lamb delivered by trucks from nearby upstate NY farms, such are the economies of scale in shipping.
But now, blow me down me hearties, I look forward to dining on New Zealand lamb carried to my door by the winds of fortune!
If there was a direct and maintained electric train route + stronger food regulation in the US you could dine on fresh local produce with a lower carbon footprint.
International cooperation and trade is great, but in the US specifically the economic behemoths have used globalization to paper over the real problems that we face at home (we haven't truly invested in infrastructure in a long time, the meat we produce is rejected on health standards abroad, etc). I doubt the smokescreen will last much longer with Trump et al blowing up international agreements.
NYers dine on fresh local produce without subsidies or government interference.
Farm fresh vegetable produce is perishable and goes from fresh to wilted/rotten very quickly. It is in the capitalist interest with no regulation to move fresh produce as quickly as possible to the supermarkets and onto the shelves. Every day trucks bring fresh produce from NJ and LI and upstate NY into the city and it immediately goes onto the shelves for sale. No communist system could do it as well.
Produce is an extremely profitable segment of supermarket sales. The markups are very low (no communist could compete) but the turnover is very quick. While a can of beans might sit there a few weeks, customers love fresh produce. So hypothetically, they could make a 0.5% markup (you going to take public transit to NJ to buy produce a half a point cheapter?), but that's every week, so in a year it's a healthy 25% markup for the supermarket's investment. I made up the numbers to explain the concept, but that in a nutshell is supermarket economics. Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%. Tiny margin, healthy profit, point made. Very efficient, happy customers, happy supermarkets.
Trucks bring produce farm to table, maybe a distribution stop. Trains are for bulk stuff and not route flexible, so it's not clear they contribute any advantage to the mix, but I love me trains too.
And it's not just NYer's, that's just an urban extreme example, every supermarket chain the the country operates like this.
>If there was a direct and maintained electric train route
What do you mean by this? Most US freight trains are already diesel electric. German freight uses overhead electric wires on most of the shared passenger rail network, which is great, but doesn’t make it any easier or faster to deliver freight to consumers. Are you thinking of high speed rail? Bullet and maglev trains aren’t used to deliver freight anywhere globally that I’m aware of.
Look around on youtube how dilapidated a lot of US freight rail is.
I'm German, so I'm well used to dishing out on our railways, but at least our rails don't look like spaghetti that have been way overcooked and can only safely be driven at walking speed.
American diesel emission standards are famously more strict than Germany's. That's the whole reason why diesel cars aren't as common in the USA, and why Volkswagen had to cheat to pass emissions tests.
US rail is in great shape. You are confusing lines that are nearly abandoned and will be soon but they can take a couple more trips for the state of US rail. US rail is in great shape overall, and very well maintained.
YouTube is not an unbiased source of information, please find a better source before making claims.
I'd first question whether the NY Times' accounting included the carbon footprint within NZ, where the lambs are probably raised far from the shipping piers. Then you've got the infrastructure and power requirements for freezing for the long ocean voyage. Then...
After that, I'd question local sheep farmers about how suitable upstate NY is for raising lambs, compared to NZ. And about the regulatory and business environment they face. Agriculture in the US is a hellish mess, and the great majority of its problems are caused by neither its associated carbon emissions nor by underinvesting in transportation infrastructure.
If anyone else was confused why those pictures were of giant tubes and not canvas sails, you are not alone. Apparently those are some version of "Suction Sails". The vendor's website has a graphic that explains it, though it was fighting my ability to scroll.
The rending of the Maersk ship really strains the concept. If the containers are stacked that high, would it not block the wind going to the solitary sail?
That is not how I read the article you linked. It says the force is perpendicular to the long axis AND airflow. And later it says the force is perpendicular to the wind.
So I am reasoning with a side wind 'on the beam' you get a force pusing forward. Which incidentally is a traditional rigs best point of sail. This doesn't appear to be the full story, since the boat in the photograph is healed over in the same way as the gaff rigged sailboat next to it, so there appears to be some sideways force too. Laterall resistance of the hull in the water will force that into a resultant force that is mostly forwards (but with some leeway) I presume.
I am supossing that when running before the wind this means the force is to one or other sides of the ships axis (depending on the rotation). The resistance of the hull to lateral motion forces this again into forward motion. But the sail is indeed being obstructed by the containers and I believe the force will therefore be diminished as per the OP, since the wind has led sail area to act on.
I am inferring all this since the wiki is light on detail.
I would be concerned that one cannot reef this kind of sail. In a storm it is going to heel the boat more, change its motion through the waves, perhaps press the bow down. Bearing in mind that on a traditional square rigger, one would lower the top part of the mast before a storm to reduce windage.
I feel a better reference would be an aid... but I'm with the op, at some points of sail the containers are in the way
There are two visually similar sails. Some are rotating tubes that generate lift via the Magnus effect, and those are not “suction sails”, strictly speaking.
A suction sail is a more or less conventional airfoil that houses an axial compressor to basically suck in air which causes the boundary layer to stay attached which generates lift via the same mechanisms as an aircraft wing.
From a distance and to a casual observer they’re pretty similar.
About the same frequency the US starts a major war or oil prices skyrocket for someone else's war. 20-ish years ago was the Iraq 2 war. 20-ish years before that was Iraq 1. Now it's the unholy combination of Ukraine beating Russia's refineries and US/Israel striking Iran.
And the higher oil prices go, the more people are interested in saving oil.
You mean once every 20 months. I've seen this article several times already. I first learned about Flettners from one - fascinating devices, btw. - which is why I notice when it resurfaces again, every year or two.
I know that freighter cruises or nontraditional ways of crossing an ocean by ship get costly quick, but looking at the prices, it adds up... You need to obtain and give them a medical clearance certificate issued in the last 30 days, you need to buy their special travel insurance, and there's a 110 Euro cost (at each end of the trip?) to take their designated taxi service to/from the ship, because regular vehicles or transportation can't approach the secured areas of the ports. It's definitely something I would still do if I had tons of extra money laying around and wanted to cross the Atlantic in a very novel way.
Agree that it's not going to be a binary shift. The tech does look promising for at least rotor sails, but that's an improvement which also demands use of traditional powerplants to drive the rotors ofc. Still worth investigating imo considering the shipping industry is the area of the world that still contributes highest to carbon output and is sort of an "untouchable" industry due to criticality. If cheap enough this could help while we wait for e.g. "greener" fuel or other things to develop. But yeah, to underscore further, not like shipping will look like my sailing yacht any time soon.
If you had bothered to at least skim TFA, this is addressed in the third paragraph:
> The idea is not to turn modern cargo ships back into sailing vessels. Instead, these systems are designed to work alongside conventional engines, using the wind to reduce fuel consumption whenever conditions allow.
News articles to this effect have been popping up occasionally for the past 20 years at least. So the economics don't seem to stack up. At least not yet; but if oil gets a bit dearer...
They really are being built and used commercially. Probably incentives play a part in this, but their numbers are slowly increasing, so it's not totally vaporware (of course we don't need new articles every ~6 month talking about how amazing this technique is) [0]
We're not going "back" to wind, but there are vessels with modern sails already deployed to save a couple of % fuel costs. There were 9 in 2020 and are 64 now, according to Sintef. Of course kinks are still getting ironed out, but it seems likely it will continue to grow.
Klaveness Combination Carriers (KCC) has launched a brand-new vessel that aims to use wind technology that the company believes will not just reduce emissions, but also improve fuel efficiency on its voyages between China and Australia.
Equipped with the first wind-assisted propulsion system in KCC’s fleet and a range of advanced energy efficiency technologies, MV Baltazar was officially launched at Fremantle Port this week
.. According to the company, due to the ship’s trading area, size and advanced energy efficiency measures including suction sails, MV Baltazar has the lowest carbon footprint of any vessel in these trades.
Currently made from crude oil in a CO2 emitting process from a finite fossil fuel resource.
And yes, whilst methanol can be distilled from wood/crops (a more expensive process), this simply cannot scale, especially if humanity wishes to eat...... You do realise a large container ship is 1/4 mile long and carries north of 18,000 TEU containers; that's 9000 lorries worth. They are big.
Much of it is, just like ammonia (see comment I responded to) but green methanol ships have been trialled using output from pilot green hydrogen plants.
> You do realise a large container ship is 1/4 mile long
People still use miles? Wow. I'm more familiar with the shipping of a billion tonne of iron ore per annum from the NW Australian coastline in bulk carrier ships but please, do blather on in that condescending tone.
Somewhere in a cube farm that hasn't been updated since the 90s:
"This month's analytics report indicates our college educated white collar employed left leaning traffic to our properties is down over the same month last year"
<puffs vape>
"Don't worry about it, I'm having AI re-write all the green tech articles from 2005-15, it'll be back by November"
"The International Windship Association says more than 100 large merchant ships are now equipped with modern wind propulsion systems, representing more than 5 million deadweight tons of carrying capacity."
It's not much, but it's more than just planned stuff. I do generally agree with your sentiment.
Let me just check the schedule here... ah, yes, it looks like we should be getting "AIRSHIPS - HAS THEIR TIME FINALLY COME" swinging back around here in about 6 weeks. See you all then.
Skysails tried, now they appear to have fully pivoted to land based power generation.
My dream future would see the oceans swarming with kite driven robotic boats that just cruise around under kite power, harvesting electricity with hydrogenerators as they go, feeding that power into a hydrolyser slowly filling some hydrogen storage unit that they drop off for sale at a port when full.
59 different companies including mine responded to MARAD's recent RFI on nuclear powered merchant ships. Many people are realizing that wind, hydrogen, ammonia, etc are falling short for global scale shipping.
If you think about this for a minute, maybe you'll be able to form a theory for why this is already very common for military vessels, but not so much for unarmed civilian ones...
I've also thought this. There are loads of offshore wind farms in the North Sea and I bet the cost per kWh at the offshore substation is a fraction of the cost compared to the same electricity once stepped up for transmission through the undersea cables to the shore, possibly curtailed due to grid congestion and then transmitted still further to the urban load centers.
If only there was a reliable, mature process to turn air\seawater plus energy at the windfarm into a synthetic fuel (ammonia or methanol maybe?) that could be then stored and used to refuel green shipping that burned no bunker fuel or diesel?
So much of our economy is local maxima and path dependencies. Plastic is so cheap because it's basically a byproduct of the heavily subsidized oil industry. When we drill for oil we always also get ethane which companies would have to pay exorbitant amounts to get rid of in compliance with environmental standards. Turning it into plastic and other petro products is a great alternative
In a world that didn't do this much oil drilling, plastic wouldn't always be the cheapest option
A 5% reduction in fuel is significant, especially as cargo ships are responsible for a disproportionate share of petro-pollution. They burn the cheapest petro gunk, emitting tremendous volumes of soot and such.
As both a sailor and a wingsail designer, I've followed this space for a long time. I've gotta say this is just one of the thousands of trial PR announcements for different companies which develop something and think it's gonna save the world.
As to why they are never successful, I don't exactly know. Most of the companies that put these on trial just quietly retire them without adoption, and never explain why. It's not about ease of use, plenty of designs have near 100% automation and simple design. It's not really about maintenance, plenty of designs have almost maintenance-free design as well.
My best guess is that sails/wingsails/rotorsails have inherent height, which interferes with bridges and gantry cranes, and requires furling/stowing capabilities which them makes the systems a lot more complex. My next best guess is that in order to get meaningful propulsion, you introduce heeling, which is bad for container ships and potentially catastrophic for dry bulk.
71 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] threadFor low-value and bulk cargo, ships make sense, and modern computer-controlled sail trim and wind energy harvesting probably makes a great case. But high value cargo is largely today shipped by air. Nvidia wants money for its chips ASAP, too valuable to sit around non productively while being steamered. Maybe with surplus wind energy they could mine bitcoin while en route?
A sort of related topic, about 20 years ago during peak farm-to-table "buy local" fashion, the NY Times pointed out that lamb shipped from New Zealand (where is that on a map, I can't find it?) to New York City arrives with a lower carbon footprint than lamb delivered by trucks from nearby upstate NY farms, such are the economies of scale in shipping.
But now, blow me down me hearties, I look forward to dining on New Zealand lamb carried to my door by the winds of fortune!
International cooperation and trade is great, but in the US specifically the economic behemoths have used globalization to paper over the real problems that we face at home (we haven't truly invested in infrastructure in a long time, the meat we produce is rejected on health standards abroad, etc). I doubt the smokescreen will last much longer with Trump et al blowing up international agreements.
Farm fresh vegetable produce is perishable and goes from fresh to wilted/rotten very quickly. It is in the capitalist interest with no regulation to move fresh produce as quickly as possible to the supermarkets and onto the shelves. Every day trucks bring fresh produce from NJ and LI and upstate NY into the city and it immediately goes onto the shelves for sale. No communist system could do it as well.
Produce is an extremely profitable segment of supermarket sales. The markups are very low (no communist could compete) but the turnover is very quick. While a can of beans might sit there a few weeks, customers love fresh produce. So hypothetically, they could make a 0.5% markup (you going to take public transit to NJ to buy produce a half a point cheapter?), but that's every week, so in a year it's a healthy 25% markup for the supermarket's investment. I made up the numbers to explain the concept, but that in a nutshell is supermarket economics. Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%. Tiny margin, healthy profit, point made. Very efficient, happy customers, happy supermarkets.
Trucks bring produce farm to table, maybe a distribution stop. Trains are for bulk stuff and not route flexible, so it's not clear they contribute any advantage to the mix, but I love me trains too.
And it's not just NYer's, that's just an urban extreme example, every supermarket chain the the country operates like this.
What do you mean by this? Most US freight trains are already diesel electric. German freight uses overhead electric wires on most of the shared passenger rail network, which is great, but doesn’t make it any easier or faster to deliver freight to consumers. Are you thinking of high speed rail? Bullet and maglev trains aren’t used to deliver freight anywhere globally that I’m aware of.
It reduces the carbon footprint considerably if you don't have to fill up your trains with carbon.
I'm German, so I'm well used to dishing out on our railways, but at least our rails don't look like spaghetti that have been way overcooked and can only safely be driven at walking speed.
YouTube is not an unbiased source of information, please find a better source before making claims.
lol
lmao even
After that, I'd question local sheep farmers about how suitable upstate NY is for raising lambs, compared to NZ. And about the regulatory and business environment they face. Agriculture in the US is a hellish mess, and the great majority of its problems are caused by neither its associated carbon emissions nor by underinvesting in transportation infrastructure.
https://bound4blue.com/esail/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor
So I am reasoning with a side wind 'on the beam' you get a force pusing forward. Which incidentally is a traditional rigs best point of sail. This doesn't appear to be the full story, since the boat in the photograph is healed over in the same way as the gaff rigged sailboat next to it, so there appears to be some sideways force too. Laterall resistance of the hull in the water will force that into a resultant force that is mostly forwards (but with some leeway) I presume.
I am supossing that when running before the wind this means the force is to one or other sides of the ships axis (depending on the rotation). The resistance of the hull to lateral motion forces this again into forward motion. But the sail is indeed being obstructed by the containers and I believe the force will therefore be diminished as per the OP, since the wind has led sail area to act on.
I am inferring all this since the wiki is light on detail.
I would be concerned that one cannot reef this kind of sail. In a storm it is going to heel the boat more, change its motion through the waves, perhaps press the bow down. Bearing in mind that on a traditional square rigger, one would lower the top part of the mast before a storm to reduce windage.
I feel a better reference would be an aid... but I'm with the op, at some points of sail the containers are in the way
A suction sail is a more or less conventional airfoil that houses an axial compressor to basically suck in air which causes the boundary layer to stay attached which generates lift via the same mechanisms as an aircraft wing.
From a distance and to a casual observer they’re pretty similar.
And the higher oil prices go, the more people are interested in saving oil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliner_Origin
Turns out, sail-power scales sublinearly and, shocker, the wind isn’t a reliable source of power for the logistics demands of today’s supply chains.
We’re never going back to wind, but we will be de-carbonizing shipping either with ammonia combustion, fuel cells, or both.
Can we built giant conveyer belts across the ocean?
Eg putting these things on ammonia powered vessel will reduce the amount of fuel needed, which is probably a net benefit.
> The idea is not to turn modern cargo ships back into sailing vessels. Instead, these systems are designed to work alongside conventional engines, using the wind to reduce fuel consumption whenever conditions allow.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship#Modern_vessels
> de-carbonizing shipping either with ammonia combustion, fuel cells, or both.
Or methanol:
* https://methanol.org/what-fuels-shipping* https://www.dnv.com/maritime/publications/methanol-fuel-in-s...
* https://www.lr.org/en/knowledge/research/fuel-for-thought/me...
Currently made from crude oil in a CO2 emitting process from a finite fossil fuel resource.
And yes, whilst methanol can be distilled from wood/crops (a more expensive process), this simply cannot scale, especially if humanity wishes to eat...... You do realise a large container ship is 1/4 mile long and carries north of 18,000 TEU containers; that's 9000 lorries worth. They are big.
Much of it is, just like ammonia (see comment I responded to) but green methanol ships have been trialled using output from pilot green hydrogen plants.
> You do realise a large container ship is 1/4 mile long
People still use miles? Wow. I'm more familiar with the shipping of a billion tonne of iron ore per annum from the NW Australian coastline in bulk carrier ships but please, do blather on in that condescending tone.
Splitting fresh water (salt water is a non-starter) for hydrogen is a rather energy inefficient and expensive process.
> People still use miles?
In maritime world, yes we do; nautical and statute.
> do blather on in that condescending tone.
I do appear to have touched a nerve old sport.
"This month's analytics report indicates our college educated white collar employed left leaning traffic to our properties is down over the same month last year"
<puffs vape>
"Don't worry about it, I'm having AI re-write all the green tech articles from 2005-15, it'll be back by November"
It's not much, but it's more than just planned stuff. I do generally agree with your sentiment.
My dream future would see the oceans swarming with kite driven robotic boats that just cruise around under kite power, harvesting electricity with hydrogenerators as they go, feeding that power into a hydrolyser slowly filling some hydrogen storage unit that they drop off for sale at a port when full.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/07/2026-09...
The technology is proven and reliable. Not to mention no emissions.
Probably initial cost is the reason this did not become something more common.
That's a great idea, and it's timely too. Right now, cargo ships are being attacked in many parts of the world.
If only there was a reliable, mature process to turn air\seawater plus energy at the windfarm into a synthetic fuel (ammonia or methanol maybe?) that could be then stored and used to refuel green shipping that burned no bunker fuel or diesel?
This particular line struck me: "When oil prices go up, so does money for fusion research"
Feels the same for sail and cargo ships.
In a world that didn't do this much oil drilling, plastic wouldn't always be the cheapest option
https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
We've been seeing these every other year or so ever since the walker wingsail back in the mid 80's:
https://www.change-climate.com/Transport_Land_Sea_Sustainabl...
As to why they are never successful, I don't exactly know. Most of the companies that put these on trial just quietly retire them without adoption, and never explain why. It's not about ease of use, plenty of designs have near 100% automation and simple design. It's not really about maintenance, plenty of designs have almost maintenance-free design as well.
My best guess is that sails/wingsails/rotorsails have inherent height, which interferes with bridges and gantry cranes, and requires furling/stowing capabilities which them makes the systems a lot more complex. My next best guess is that in order to get meaningful propulsion, you introduce heeling, which is bad for container ships and potentially catastrophic for dry bulk.