Global trade depends almost entirely on huge, dirty, dangerous container ships. Now a team of French shipbuilders is bringing back wind-powered sea freight

[Alan de Enfield]

‘It’s a little bit of utopia’: the dream of replacing container ships with sailing boats | Water transport | The Guardian

 

 

Last March, the whole world saw one of the largest cargo ships in existence – 400 metres long, weighing 265,000 tonnes, loaded with 20,000 shipping containers – get stuck in the Suez canal. For six days, tiny tugs tried to nudge the EverGiven off a sandbar. Waiting at both ends of the canal were more than 300 cargo ships and tankers, carrying petrol, semiconductors, microchips, scrunchie hair bands, sneakers, hand-held travel steamers, ice-cream-makers, novelty socks and electric milk-frothers. As the global supply chain ground to a halt, we became aware that 90% of everything in our homes – clothes, appliances, food – has, at some point, been transported by sea.

Cargo ships burn some of the dirtiest petrol going, known as bunker. Made from the sludgy leftovers of petrol refining, it is as viscous and black as molasses and full of sulphur; when it burns it gives off carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide. Container ports are consequently wreathed in smog. Shipping accounts for 2%-3% of global carbon emissions, but it also damages the environment in other ways. Ships regularly dump garbage and contaminated bilge water into the ocean, and underwater noise pollution disrupts the life cycles of fish, whales and dolphins.

 

While other industries are turning to alternative fuels, shipping has lagged behind. The International Maritime Organization, the UN agency that oversees the shipping industry, has drawn up plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions of the global cargo fleet. But many observers consider the targets unambitious and, as there is little threat of punishment if they aren’t met, toothless. “They’re a sham … window dressing,” one shipping journalist told me.

Olivier Barreau and his twin brother, Jacques, are part of a small but growing number of entrepreneurs who are grappling with the problem of how to transport goods across the globe at a scale that makes economic sense, without further damaging the planet. One blustery wet winter day at the end of 2010, Olivier found himself standing on a quay at Paimpol, a small fishing harbour on the rocky north coast of Brittany, looking up at a steel-hulled three-masted boat, built in 1907, that had clearly seen better days. Olivier had just turned 40, had cashed out of a wind-energy business he co-founded and was looking for new projects. He had been brought to the quay by Stéphane Guichen, a friend of a friend, who had given up an academic career to take up harvesting salt in the ancient way, using solar evaporation, and had the crazy idea to transport his salt around the coast by sailing boat.

 

Olivier clambered aboard. “I could see it was ugly, dangerous, it had no real cargo capacity, and it was rotting,” he told me. It was, he said, a great idea for someone who wanted to lose a lot of money. He is not someone who likes to lose a lot of money. “If it’s not going to make a profit, there’s no sense in it,” he told me.

Still, the idea of a cargo sailing boat stirred something deep in Olivier. He and his brother’s childhood had been shaped by sea and wind. They had grown up in Brittany, and there were several generations of seafarers in the family. As a child, Olivier loved paragliding, windsurfing and kitesurfing. “It wasn’t a rational feeling,” he told me of the moment he stepped aboard the boat. “It brought together many things that were familiar to me: the sea, sailing, ecology, the use of a different kind of energy, the use of wind.”

 

The environmental argument for cargo sailing was sound, he thought. Paul Hawken, an American environmentalist, businessman and writer, has said: “The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces.” But the economics of it presented a problem. Shipping costs are all about economies of scale. The larger the boat, the greater the cargo capacity and, correspondingly, the smaller the cost per tonne. Cargo would cost more to ship on a small sailing boat, no matter the savings in fuel.

Over the course of several months, the Barreau brothers developed the idea, along with Guichen, a sailmaker named François Liron and an assortment of other friends, boat builders and sailors. Here was the challenge: could they make a viable business out of a cargo sailing boat? And behind this was an even larger question: was it really possible to create a business that operated on environmental principles? Could you make money and do no harm?

[pearley]

There was an Isle of Wight firm a few years ago developing sails for modern ships.

[Alan de Enfield]

The article is a long one, but a good read and explains the difficulties in the various fuel options.

[IanD]

29 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

The article is a long one, but a good read and explains the difficulties in the various fuel options.

Indeed, there's a bit of difference between one small 300t ship and hundreds of 200000t ships...

[BEngo]

There is much work going on into wind powered ships.  Flettner rotors, wingsails,  computer controlled flexible sails and other ideas.  They all still have to overcome the basic problem:  If the wind doesn't blow, the ship won't go.  That is compounded by the inconvenience that modern trade arteries are not always aligned with using the  prevailing winds.   You also have to get the ships into and out of harbours reliably and safely.

The most likely outcome is 'sail' assistance on long passages with cleaner fuels for unsuitable weather and end of voyage manoeuvres.  Not much burns straight "bunkers" these days.

 

Ballast water wildlife is another big current problem.

 

N

 

 

[IanD]

24 minutes ago, BEngo said:

There is much work going on into wind powered ships.  Flettner rotors, wingsails,  computer controlled flexible sails and other ideas.  They all still have to overcome the basic problem:  If the wind doesn't blow, the ship won't go.  That is compounded by the inconvenience that modern trade arteries are not always aligned with using the  prevailing winds.   You also have to get the ships into and out of harbours reliably and safely.

The most likely outcome is 'sail' assistance on long passages with cleaner fuels for unsuitable weather and end of voyage manoeuvres.  Not much burns straight "bunkers" these days.

 

Ballast water wildlife is another big current problem.

 

N

 

 

The biggest problem is that sailing ships don't scale up like diesel-powered ones do, things like mast thicknesses grow faster than the ship length -- like the way that dinosaurs had massively thick leg bones. The world's biggest sailing ship is 5000 tons and about 400' long, and needs a far bigger crew to sail it than a 240000t container ship which is 1300' long. Even if enough big sailing ships could be built -- and that would mean tens of thousands of them to carry current global trade -- the cost of shipping would go up massively, building the ships would cost maybe 100x more and crewing costs would be similar.

 

Global trade would fall drastically as a result -- which some people might say is a good thing because it stops local industries being wiped out by cheap imports. But the other side of this coin is that costs of many things would go up massively, along with the cost of living...

 

Sailing ships worked 200 years ago when global trade was maybe 1000x smaller than it is now; they don't realistically offer a solution for today's world.

 

Here's a list of just the largest container ships in the world:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships

 

About 100 of them over 200000t, meaning a total capacity of 20M tons. Just to replace these with 5000t sailing ships would need 4000 of them -- or 2000 10000t, or 1000 20000t, or...

 

Total worldwide shipping tonnage is about 2000M tons, 100x bigger than above...

Edited July 14, 2022 by IanD

[Dav and Pen]

There are a lot of trials of various types of wind assistance devices being tried out on commercial ships. There are rotors and computer controlled wind sails shaped like the ones on surf boards and a Japanese company is planning on using huge kites. So far they have made savings of around 8% on co2 emissions.  The rotor type seem to be most popular and they are particularly popular with Scandinavian ships mainly bulk carriers but at least one ferry has some fitted. This plus hybrid systems and use of ammonia and Lng is the near future for commercial shipping.
 

 

 

[IanD]

1 hour ago, Dav and Pen said:

There are a lot of trials of various types of wind assistance devices being tried out on commercial ships. There are rotors and computer controlled wind sails shaped like the ones on surf boards and a Japanese company is planning on using huge kites. So far they have made savings of around 8% on co2 emissions.  The rotor type seem to be most popular and they are particularly popular with Scandinavian ships mainly bulk carriers but at least one ferry has some fitted. This plus hybrid systems and use of ammonia and Lng is the near future for commercial shipping.
 

 

 

And that is a tiny ship, probably a hundredth the size of a big container ship.

 

All the proposals to use wind power for shipping completely ignore the fact that it's literally impossible to scale this up, see the numbers I posted above. Using wind power for 1% of shipping is pointless, we need a solution for 90% of shipping -- and wind power is not it, no matter how nice it looks... 😞

Edited July 14, 2022 by IanD

[Chris Lowe]

This one a bit bigger, powered by Flettner rotors.

 

 

This is the original The Buckau

 

[BilgePump]

Interesting article and it would be great to see sail as viable, if only for its environmental low impact. However, the article also makes it clear that for the brothers' operation, it can only really work for high value, boutique type goods, where the low carbon footprint is part of the selling point and high cost factors in the high shipping costs. Didn't it say they were shipping posh wine to the Americas and bringing back beans for eco-choccy and coffee. I don't see that it's possible to scale it up for bringing loads of cheap USB cables from China.

[Arthur Marshall]

A story along these lines surfaces every few years and then disappears. So does the one about bringing back dirigibles for air freight.

[Chris Lowe]

18 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

So does the one about bringing back dirigibles for air freight.

Yes we haven't seen loads of Airlanders yet.

[howardang]

57 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

A story along these lines surfaces every few years and then disappears. So does the one about bringing back dirigibles for air freight.

I wonder if the two Frenchman actually understand the issues in developing an efficient vessel, and the scale and complexities involved in the modern international container trade? Even ignoring the many errors in the long article, their concept is totally unrealistic in so many ways, and even the idea of wind assistance is something which will be extremely difficult to achieve considering the size of modern container vessels, coupled  with the size of crews required.

In my view the development of environmentally friendly fuels is where the focus should be concentrated and much work is already being done in this regard. 
 

Howard

 

 

[IanD]

2 hours ago, buccaneer66 said:

This one a bit bigger, powered by Flettner rotors.

 

 

This is the original The Buckau

 

Even the big one is still 100x smaller than the big container ships...

 

These typically use 100000hp diesels (75MW) to move a 240000 ton ship carrying 24000 containers.

 

Now work out how many 100m tall wind turbines you'd need to generate this much power, and how much area they'd occupy. Clue: *way* bigger than even the biggest ship.

 

Wind is a low density power source...

Edited July 14, 2022 by IanD

[Alan de Enfield]

7 minutes ago, howardang said:

In my view the development of environmentally friendly fuels is where the focus should be concentrated and much work is already being done in this regard. 

 

Which despite the forum negative comments may well be why Maersk have bought into a Methane manufacturing company. I'd even go so far as to say that their experts (probably) easily  'trump' all of the electric evangelicals on this forum.

 

Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, is banking on a mix of new fuels. Last year it invested in a US company that manufactures green methane, and in a startup company that is trying to produce carbon-based electrofuels from direct air capture of CO2

[IanD]

9 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Which despite the forum negative comments may well be why Maersk have bought into a Methane manufacturing company. I'd even go so far as to say that their experts (probably) easily  'trump' all of the electric evangelicals on this forum.

 

Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, is banking on a mix of new fuels. Last year it invested in a US company that manufactures green methane, and in a startup company that is trying to produce carbon-based electrofuels from direct air capture of CO2

 

But the problem is -- where does the energy come from to manufacture these wonderful "green" fuels?

 

If it all came from renewables then sure, they'd genuinely be "green".

 

But in real life today -- and for the foreseeable future -- grid power comes a mixture of renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels, and since renewables are green and cheap every last bit of available power from them is used, then nuclear, with the balance made up from fossil-fuel sources.

 

If large amounts of power are used to manufacture the so-called "green" wonder-fuels this has to come from somewhere -- and since all available renewable energy is already consumed, the only place this can come from is burning more fossil fuel. This is true even as more renewable energy sources are added, up to the point where the grid is 100% renewable -- but this is a *very* long way into the future.

 

Of course the same is true for any energy storage method (which is all these "green" fuels are) including batteries -- so then the question is, how much extra fossil fuel needs to be burned to generate it?

 

With batteries -- or any other highly efficient energy storage method -- the answer is much less than by burning the fuel in IC engines, which is why so many energy sectors are moving this way.

 

But if you use the energy to manufacture "green" fuels and then burn it in diesel engines, you need to burn *more* fossil fuel to make the "green" fuel than you'd need to just power the ship with a diesel engine.

 

All this is conveniently ignored by the "green wonder fuel" proponents, who always assume that the energy magically comes from renewable sources -- but it doesn't...

 

The only way their claims are true is if massive amounts of renewable energy would somehow be available ("solar farm in the desert") which can't be used for anything else. But the answer then is to connect these desert solar farms to the grid, not waste most of it making "green" fuels.

 

Yes I know that batteries are not a viable solution for long-distance shipping and these fuels appear to be at first glance, but their claim to be "green" is somewhere between deliberate greenwashing, delusion, and just plain lies when you look at the big picture -- which journalists are simply failing to do... 😞

[cuthound]

16 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

A story along these lines surfaces every few years and then disappears. So does the one about bringing back dirigibles for air freight.

 

I remember seeing the Airship Industries airships gliding over London from my office window back in the mid 80's.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Industries_Skyship_500

[sigsegv]

On 14/07/2022 at 21:45, BilgePump said:

However, the article also makes it clear that for the brothers' operation, it can only really work for high value, boutique type goods, where the low carbon footprint is part of the selling point and high cost factors in the high shipping costs. Didn't it say they were shipping posh wine to the Americas and bringing back beans for eco-choccy and coffee. I don't see that it's possible to scale it up for bringing loads of cheap USB cables from China.

This is quite common in tech R&D - initially it's only viable for high-cost items/services, but that helps fund further R&D that develops more effective/efficient innovations, which drives cost down, which makes it a more feasible option for a slowly increasing number of customers. Unless, of course, it's a dead end... like dirigibles.

[IanD]

11 hours ago, sigsegv said:

This is quite common in tech R&D - initially it's only viable for high-cost items/services, but that helps fund further R&D that develops more effective/efficient innovations, which drives cost down, which makes it a more feasible option for a slowly increasing number of customers. Unless, of course, it's a dead end... like dirigibles.

True, unless the technology is inherently incapable of scaling up to the sizes needed to be commercially viable. Which is the case for anyone hoping that sail (or Flettner rotors, or wind turbines...) can make more than the tinest dent in the world longhaul shipping market, because wind power (and solar power) are very low density in W/m2. The numbers don't lie... 😞

Edited July 17, 2022 by IanD

[MPR]

On 14/07/2022 at 15:27, pearley said:

There was an Isle of Wight firm a few years ago developing sails for modern ships.

Was that Walker's Wingsails?

[zenataomm]

On 14/07/2022 at 15:27, pearley said:

There was an Isle of Wight firm a few years ago developing sails for modern ships.

I can remember as far back as the 70s when these over ambitious headlines started appearing.

[gatekrash]

2 hours ago, MPR said:

Was that Walker's Wingsails?

Thank you, I've been trying to remember the name of that company for days. They were based out of Plymouth in the mid /late 80s. They'd sold the concept to a few companies and got their sails onto a couple of large tankers, then the global oil price crashed and put them pretty much out of business. There was a leisure Tri or catamaran based in Plymouth with one of their sails on it, remember it was a pale violet/blue colour and was marketed for a large 6 figure sum, but never caught on. Yachties weren't interested because you drove it by a wheel inside and the sail was computer controlled so you weren't hands on, and motor boaters didn't like it cos it had 'sails' and want particularly quick. I seem to remember it being badly damaged in a gale down here after the sail feathering system didn't  quite work properly.

 

These days it'd probably get a lot more interest. Bit like Clive Sinclair's C5, right concept but 35 years too early.

Edited July 17, 2022 by gatekrash
Spelling

[pearley]

17 hours ago, MPR said:

Was that Walker's Wingsails?

That sounds right.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

On 14/07/2022 at 20:41, IanD said:

And that is a tiny ship, probably a hundredth the size of a big container ship.

 

All the proposals to use wind power for shipping completely ignore the fact that it's literally impossible to scale this up, see the numbers I posted above. Using wind power for 1% of shipping is pointless, we need a solution for 90% of shipping -- and wind power is not it, no matter how nice it looks... 😞

Which means that to go to sail, you'll only be using it to transport relatively high value goods, like the company is in the article. Similar to as it was 250 years ago; tea, spices, silk, slaves, tobacco, cotton, etc. Not cheap plastic tat from the far East, much of which shouldn't be made at all, let alone shipped half way round the world. 

[Alan de Enfield]

24 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Which means that to go to sail, you'll only be using it to transport relatively high value goods, like the company is in the article. Similar to as it was 250 years ago; tea, spices, silk, slaves, tobacco, cotton, etc. Not cheap plastic tat from the far East, much of which shouldn't be made at all, let alone shipped half way round the world. 

 

I think I have all of the 99p Chinese tat I'm ever going to need, so, lets stop importing it and save the world.