this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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The ~90,000 shipping freighters that operate daily use twice the amount of fuel than all ~2.5 billion cars that are on the roads globally. We're electrifying the wrong shit.
And how do you plan on electrifying such massive ships?
Electrifying cars is easy and electrified railways have existed for more than a century now, but good luck electrifying airplanes or cargo ships, they’re just too big and don’t run on tracks
Start with banning nonessentials such as cruise ships and get rid of private jets while we're at it, to start at least.
I think with ships a good starting point would be making them burn cleaner fuel. The heavy oil they're currently burning on ocean trips isn't exactly the cleanest fuel around, having ships burn the gasoline we save from electric cars would already do a lot.
Now this is a more reasonable take, first try finding a more sustainable fuel to use then think of a way to electrify it (if at all possible)
Gotta try first, got a whole world filled with specialists in various areas of expertise that could if they actually had the backing and funding of their governments and their voters to make a concerted effort in developing a solution. But that's not profitable, ergo under capitalism, not financially viable.
An electric car is easy, 2.5 billion electric cars not so much. One electric ocean faring vessel is difficult, but once you can 90,000 is easy. And like I said, 90,000 cargo vessel are using twice the fuel resources of those 2.5 billion cars. That's approx ~56,000 electric cars vs one electric cargo vessal
Just thinking out loud here, but if the main problem with building 2.5 billion EVs is making the batteries, why would that change anything if those 90,000 cargo ships each need 56,000 EV's worth of batteries? I'm sure there's some efficiency to be gained by making larger batteries, but it still doesn't quite add up.
Of course this also assuming a cargo ship is as efficient as a car in terms of replacing the ICE with an electric motor. I've heard the fuel these cargo ships use is some of the worst quality fuel that we have and it doesn't burn well, but it's very cheap in the insane quantities they need.
That's not how scaling works, big is easier, small is harder. Also we'd be replacing 56,000 cars worth of fuel storage on that cargo ship too. We can make non lithium batteries for mass storage, but they're the size of a house, couldn't get one in my car, but something tells me a cargo ship could carry it.
It's way easier to electrify cars than cargo ships, because you can refuel/recharge cars every few kilometres. This is simply not possible with ships, other more expensive technologies like hydrogen or artificial fuels are needed. Electrifying cars also helps to reduce other emissions like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which is good for your health.
That's actually not true, right? https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-co2-emissions-from-transport-by-sub-sector-in-the-net-zero-scenario-2000-2030
In 2019 there are 6.08 Gt from road vehicles compared to the 0.87 Gt from shipping. That's just overwhelming.
I'm speaking on base resource consumption, not emissions. And the main factor for shipping having less emissions is due to mass transit, this is why they say promoting mass transit is better than improving fuel efficiency or emissions in personal vehicles.
But I thought climate change was all my fault, and that if I just use less water in my garden everything will be fixed.
Are you saying that the news lied to me?!?
/s
It is all our fault, just not for the reasons you mentioned. It's our fault for allowing it to happen, it's out fault for voting for capitalism, it's our fault for being undereducated, it's our fault for not stopping it. The problem isn't that it's our fault, the problem is that we haven't killed anyone over their exploitation of us and our planet yet, except ourselves.
Society breeds civility through cowardice, we know this because it's immortal to attack a bad actor.
Giant flexible solar sails on shipping freighters powering the engines and catching wind could be an interesting and old school way of moving products. I think possibly direct airship shipping would be more interesting. Tens of thousands of slow moving solar powered airships moving freight without having to deal with multiple transportation solutions.
Pickup at factory, move across ocean on airship, deliver to customer. Much better than pickup at warehouse deliver to terminal, move to carrier, carrier moves it to terminal, load on ship, cross world, unload off ship, loads container onto train, train take container to yard, stores at yard, loaded onto truck, deliver to terminal.