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.
> Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%.
That's not how profit works. If you spend $100 to make $102, that's a 2% margin. If you do that every week, you've spent $5200 to make $5304: still a 2% margin.
You don't get to count only the margin every week, you have to count the outlay every week too...
>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.
Perhaps I misread the parent comment, but the emphasis on that clause seemed to be on the fresh produce, not the lower carbon emissions. I don’t know how swapping out for 100% electric improves people’s access to fresh produce is my point
Diesel electric are not at all the same as an electric train network.
Electric trains have a very interesting property, as they work as a grid as both producers, feeding back when they are breaking.
You made a second point, that most trains are already "diesel electric", I am pointing out, that the function is very different from an electric train, and much less friendly(and less efficient) to the environment.
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.
I'm not sure when the lamb chops started showing up in local supermarkets but it feels like it's recent. I dress them in olive oil + kosher salt + crushed garlic + chopped thyme and oregano, and then grill over lump charcoal.
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.
Huh. I live in a major UK port city and while of course the actual docks are a restricted area I don't think anybody would stop me just walking in. Indeed one of the city buses goes there - it does say that you need a reason to still be on the bus when it enters that restricted area but obviously nobody checked any of the times I've been on that bus.
I think some of the "ride sharing" people are intimidated by the scary legal notices, when we tried to leave again after looking around a possible floating venue for my friend's big party she tried to summon an Uber (or maybe Lyft? One of them) and it did not result in ever getting a ride, but we eventually just booked an ordinary 20th century style cab out of the zone (the docks are sprawling, so walking out would take ages). This whole thing about paying €110 for a special taxi seems crazy. Is this normal in France?
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]
I've seen a few articles about Norsepower (mentioned in the top article) validating the shipboard measurement equipment meant to confirm how much is actively being saved by their sails. I haven't seen any hard numbers on what the actual savings are, but they've had at least one ship (Chinook Oldendorff) with sails since at least 2024. So hopefully the public will get some concrete numbers on how much is saved.
Given the increasing number of companies that are mentioned as upcoming partners for actual installations, it might be that they've finally been able to convince shippers that wind power is viable for cost savings.
Is that 10% best case or average case? Also, what's the capex on the the sails, and what's the additional opex (training, maintenance)? Not trying to pooh-pooh the idea, but as said, I've seen articles like this regularly for decades, and it hasn't become the norm, so I'd figure there's a reason for that.
The issue is that when conditions do not allow they actively increase fuel consumption through windage, maneuverability loss, air draft increases and extra weight. They also increase costs through increased maintenance needs and crew training and limits on which docks can load and unload them.
We have had hybrid sail/combustion engine cargo ships for 200+ years, today they are reduced to novelty or historical status. We have been experimenting with goofy hi tech rotary sails for more than a century, and no one has really done more than make a few demonstrators for publicity.
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.
Nuclear power is expensive enough on land. At sea it’ll never compete with any other energy source. They’ll be pulling hydrocarbons from the air before they do nuclear ships in earnest. Yes I have heard of nuclear carriers and subs, the only two useful applications of nuclear power at sea.
Thanks, I am pretty knowledgeable about nuclear ships and they’re only used in specific situations because they don’t care about cost for those situations. It’s too expensive for cargo and there is no training pipeline for civilian naval reactors so this idea is dead on arrival.
I’m pro nuclear tech but the economics and systems will not support nuclear for ships right now. We are barely making headway into nuclear on land these days, let’s focus on that for now.
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 guess this is not exactly "cost", but also lifetime spans. A nuclear reactor can sustain a ship for about 20+ years, and that lifetime is too long for many ships, who would be headed out to the scrap yard in less time than that.
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.
Unpredictability. The sails do reduce costs/fuel but they do so in a rather unpredictable manner. Cargo hauling is all about rigid scheduals and precalculated costs: contracts to deliver at an exact time and load an exact amount of fuel. Unpredictable elements, even if on average mostly good, do not mesh with that culture.
It's not about schedules. These things don't change when you arrive; they change how much it costs to arrive and how heavy you arrive.
So the only logical explanation is that they don't do that by enough to be worth installing and maintaining, or for fuel market systems to adapt to an amount of oversupply.
They clearly adapt to an amount of undersupply; ships are fairly often going to burn more fuel than the route might ordinarily need due to being held up or weather or the need to reroute, are they not? So it doesn't seem implausible that the market would adapt to this; it's going to average out quite quickly. It is presumably therefore about the juice not being worth the squeeze.
Heh, I work for a freight forwarder and spent half the day yesterday explaining to customers that the margin of error on their containers is currently between 1 to 2 weeks.
Not sure where I've read this, one of the main causes is supposedly ship ownership. Firms that operate ships pay for the fuel and would benefit from the retrofit for some specific routes. Outside a few that operate their own fleet, most are rented and mounting something expensive for no benefit to themselves and questionable benefit outside of areas with trade winds would be pretty idiotic from that perspective.
What would make it successful is some kind of mandate for a certain percentage of power needing to come from wind. The invisible hand of the market keeps burning the cheapest thing all day long if you leave it to its own devices.
The bottom line is though that cargo shipping is a time sensitive thing in today's world and wind does not cooperate with timetables. Saildrones and sailing yachts are the only good fits for it, since neither is in much of a hurry. Commercial shipping probably needs renewably generated biofuel to run carbon neutral and still function as we know it.
> in order to get meaningful propulsion, you introduce heeling
I think that in order for this to work we would have to take on more traditional downwind trade routes, which would avoid a lot of the traditional heeling
93 comments
[ 83.6 ms ] story [ 433 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.
That's not how profit works. If you spend $100 to make $102, that's a 2% margin. If you do that every week, you've spent $5200 to make $5304: still a 2% margin.
You don't get to count only the margin every week, you have to count the outlay every week too...
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.
You made a second point, that most trains are already "diesel electric", I am pointing out, that the function is very different from an electric train, and much less friendly(and less efficient) to the environment.
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
I think some of the "ride sharing" people are intimidated by the scary legal notices, when we tried to leave again after looking around a possible floating venue for my friend's big party she tried to summon an Uber (or maybe Lyft? One of them) and it did not result in ever getting a ride, but we eventually just booked an ordinary 20th century style cab out of the zone (the docks are sprawling, so walking out would take ages). This whole thing about paying €110 for a special taxi seems crazy. Is this normal in France?
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
Given the increasing number of companies that are mentioned as upcoming partners for actual installations, it might be that they've finally been able to convince shippers that wind power is viable for cost savings.
We have had hybrid sail/combustion engine cargo ships for 200+ years, today they are reduced to novelty or historical status. We have been experimenting with goofy hi tech rotary sails for more than a century, and no one has really done more than make a few demonstrators for publicity.
> 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...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
I’m pro nuclear tech but the economics and systems will not support nuclear for ships right now. We are barely making headway into nuclear on land these days, let’s focus on that for now.
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.
So the only logical explanation is that they don't do that by enough to be worth installing and maintaining, or for fuel market systems to adapt to an amount of oversupply.
They clearly adapt to an amount of undersupply; ships are fairly often going to burn more fuel than the route might ordinarily need due to being held up or weather or the need to reroute, are they not? So it doesn't seem implausible that the market would adapt to this; it's going to average out quite quickly. It is presumably therefore about the juice not being worth the squeeze.
This doesn't rule out illogical explanations.
What would make it successful is some kind of mandate for a certain percentage of power needing to come from wind. The invisible hand of the market keeps burning the cheapest thing all day long if you leave it to its own devices.
The bottom line is though that cargo shipping is a time sensitive thing in today's world and wind does not cooperate with timetables. Saildrones and sailing yachts are the only good fits for it, since neither is in much of a hurry. Commercial shipping probably needs renewably generated biofuel to run carbon neutral and still function as we know it.
I think that in order for this to work we would have to take on more traditional downwind trade routes, which would avoid a lot of the traditional heeling
https://stenaline.com/media/stories/introducing-stena-connec...
They are in commercial service already on the Irish Sea.