23 ms·
New ways to foot the hefty bill for making old ships less polluting
- marcusarmstrong 10y agoIMO, the title should note that "oxides" does not include "Carbon Dioxide".
- JamilD 10y agoIt's also worth noting - for those that will inevitably use this to defend driving - that the environmental effects of cars extend way past dioxide emissions.
- mikeash 10y agoThat would run counter to the goal of these articles, which is to trivialize the importance of pollution from cars and make environmental activists look like fools.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mortehu 10y agoThe original title is "Green finance for dirty ships", and the article uses the phrase "oxides of nitrogen and sulphur", rather than just "oxides". If anyone still doesn't know that CO2 is the biggest total contributor to global warming in recent times, I wouldn't put the blame squarely on this article.
- mikeash 10y agoThere is a shitload of politically-motivated anti-scientific propaganda out there written with the intent of confusing people into believing falsehoods about climate change. And there are a shitload of people who fall victim to it. Contributing to that misinformation is not a good thing.
- Angostura 10y agoAs something of environmental activist. No. These kinds of articles are useful because they highlight areas for campaigning that otherwise can be overlooked.
- mikeash 10y agoOcean shipping isn't a particularly big contributor to climate change, so "they highlight areas for campaigning that otherwise can be overlooked" is just another way of saying "they distract you from more important stuff."
- ascorbic 10y agoAnd why would they want to do that?
- mikeash 10y agoThey're politically invested against action taken to mitigate climate change, and the best way to push those policies is to convince people that climate change isn't important and the people who say it's important are either idiots or lying.
- ascorbic 10y agoThe Economist? You clearly don't read it. It's strongly in favour of action against climate change. They sometimes disagree about the best actions to take, and mostly oppose subsidies for renewables, but they certainly don't say it's not important.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoWhy? I thought Carbon Dioxide was one of the most innocuous oxides released by engines, both in environmental and health effects.
- aardvark291 10y agoThat's true. As a pollutant, carbon dioxide is almost entirely innocuous, except for its behavior as a greenhouse gas. In that role, carbon dioxide is the most significant driver of global warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Natural_and_anthropogenic_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Natural_and_ant...
- pfarnsworth 10y agoMethane is worse.
- aardvark291 10y agoA methane molecule is 72 times worse than a CO2 molecule in terms of "global warming potential" over a 20 year time scale and around 7 times worse over a 500 year time scale). However, we put a lot more CO2 into the atmosphere than we do methane. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Global_warming_potential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Global_warming_...
- mikesmith112 10y agoDoesn't that indicate methane is the low hanging fruit? I guess that assumes it's the same cost to prevent / recapture 1 molecule of methane vs. CO2... But if the next 20 yrs are the most crucial, methane sounds like a great target. seems likely; after that, technology will hopefully have stabilized our energy sources
- CydeWeys 10y agoThe total volume of emitted carbon dioxide, of which land vehicles are a major contributor, is a significant factor in global climate change. An insufficiently specific headline that can be read to imply otherwise is thus misleading.
- anonu 10y agoA bit of clarification on which oxides, from the article: By burning heavy fuel oil, just 15 of the biggest ships emit more oxides of nitrogen and sulphur—gases much worse for global warming than carbon dioxide—than all the world’s cars put together
- mikeash 10y ago"gases much worse for global warming than carbon dioxide" Do you have a source on that? My understanding was that they are short lived and block heat rather than retain it.
- djsumdog 10y agoWell he was quoting the article, so you're really asking if the Economist has a source for that.
- mikeash 10y agoLooks like a combination of false and misleading. Perusing Wikipedia's list of gases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Global_warming_potential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Global_warming_... The only listed oxides are CO2 and N2O. N2O does indeed have much greater potential than CO2, but its concentration in the atmosphere is only 270ppb, which is 20% over preindustrial levels, so its overall contribution is negligible.
- mrkurt 10y agoNot false. The EPA quotes that "300x worse" number directly: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#nitrous-oxide https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#n...
- mikeash 10y agoThe "false" part is all the other oxides emitted by ships that don't contribute to climate change. Sulfur dioxide, for example, cools the planet.
- holydude 10y agoWhich makes danes one of the biggest hypocrites on planet earth.
- tajen 10y agoWe won't solve global warming by finding the hypocrites. We'll solve it by knowing the problems and resolving them (or, if we don't want to work 1 problem after 1 problem, imposing taxes on petroleum usage or gas emissions, but history shows that such laws never get through).
- woof 10y agoYou'd find the biggest hypocrites among all the consumers buying goods shipped around the world on those ships.
- flexie 10y agoDanes are not 'one' but 5.6 million, they don't all share the same opinion on the environment, on shipping, or on Maersk. But I agree that Danish governments have succeeded in making Denmark appear much more environmentally progressive than is generally the case and that is a form of hypocrisy.
- holydude 10y agoNot only that but look at their taxes and tariffs for cars. That is hilarious!
- macmac 10y agoOnly until you compare the environmental impact of shipping / ton / km to other transport modes - at which point you realise that modern container vessels is by far the most environment friendly transport mode.
- djsumdog 10y ago> Such schemes used to be thwarted by the difficulty of measuring exact fuel consumption on ships. New technologies allow more accurate readings. Why is it so difficult to measure fuel consumption on ships?
- digler999 10y agoyou bet whoever's paying for it knows exactly how much fuel each ship consumes.
- jhlgkhkhil 10y agoShips can burn a wide range of fuels. The cost per litre can vary enormously. The amount they burn per unit distance depends upon their speed. This means that whilst whomever is paying will have good control upon overall fuel price this may not map to fuel volume in as simple a way as the cost of fuel for a diesel truck would.
- dredmorbius 10y agoTransnational jurisdictions.
- Casseres 10y agoFormer ship engineer here. I only worked with Diesel, not HFOs. Due to the rocking of the ship, it's hard to get an accurate reading of the fuel in the tanks. Fuel is transferred from storage tanks to a day tank, and a fuel meter can be used for that, but that only tells you how much you transferred, not how much you consumed. Unless you always fill the day tank to the exact same level (remember, hard to measure at sea) and at the same time each day, you won't know exactly how much was burned in a 24 hour period. And of course fuel consumption changes based on the ships speed. This is a good, short explanation on how we measure tanks on ships: http://benvalle.com/Level.html http://benvalle.com/Level.html Edit: there is probably a lot of money to be made if someone can come up with a very accurate tank measuring method. I've seen some tanks use ultrasound to detect the level in a sounding tube, but sometimes those can be distorted if the "liquid" sticks to the sensor. Maybe some kind of 3d mapping? However not all tanks have an unabstructed free surface in order to prevent the free surface effect from capsizing the ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_surface_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_surface_effect 2nd edit: Maybe not, since measuring at sea isn't as important as measuring in port when the ship is not rocking and the products are being transferred to/from ship. I'll leave the first edit since it might be interesting to people.
- igravious 10y ago15 Biggest Ships Create More Pollution Than All Cars in the World (2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716102 128 points by danboarder 457 days ago | 65 comments
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI've hit my limit for the economist this month, so I went and looked up the article. It seems these articles have been coming out since at least 2009, and the gist is that because these (older) ships burn heavy fuel, which isn't refined like gasoline. And it seems the fix is to urge the companies to update their ships by not allowing them in ports, but considering how long these articles have been coming out, it looks like progress is slow on that front - and if it has changed. Shipping companies have been selling off some of their stock, and it would seem that at least a few of the older ships should have been included.
- CydeWeys 10y agoIt's more so that they have no scrubbers on them at all than the specific kind of fuel they burn. A random ten-year-old diesel truck has a way better pollution control system on it (by virtue of it even existing) than the largest cargo ships in the world, despite burning way, way less fuel. It just comes down to cost and lack of pollution emission regulation at a global level, which should absolutely be addressed.
- kogepathic 10y ago> That also imperils banks across the world, which have lent $400bn secured on smoke-spewing ships. So, why should we care? Presumably the banks have paid analysts to determine that was a sound investment. If governments are doing their jobs, banks should be able to eat this kind of loss without becoming insolvent. Otherwise why bother having regulations at all, if every minor hiccup means taxpayers have to bail out the banks? Why do I care if shipping companies go out of business because of over capacity? Isn't that what market forces are all about? So we should keep dangerously polluting ships running, because the banks that loan the shippers money will lose their shirts for several quarters if the shipping company goes bust?
- sambe 10y agoWho on earth are you arguing with? The article doesn't say you should care or that the banks should be bailed out. In fact, it's a neutral analysis of the status quo with a positive slant towards a green solution.
- hyperliner 10y agoWhy do you care that these companies go out of business? The answer is that you care because you need all the stuff you consume that comes from across the oceans. You care because you complain if the stuff you buy is more expensive, penalizing companies that use cleaner shipping nethods. You care because (I think) you are not the one committing your money to create a less contaminating medium of transportation. At the end of the day, you care that these ships are operational because it's better for you and you don't care about the damage for the future of others. you above is not just you but all of us.
- vesinisa 10y agoI don't quite understand the sentiment. There is no word proposing bailing out banks or shipping companies in the article. Instead, an arrangement is proposed where multiple charterers would share the cost of upgrading the ship over more than one contract period. Such arrangement would logically seem preferable over the insolvency of any party, which causes wider mayhem.
- 10y ago
- jerkstate 10y agoyou know what's even more interesting, it seems like shipping fuel is heavily subsidized. The international price for bunker fuel is about $330 per ton. Oil is $50 per barrel, a barrel is about 300 lbs, so 7.5 barrels make a ton. That's $375. Why is the refined product cheaper than the raw product? edit: many have responded calling residual fuel a "waste product" - it is useful and being used so calling a waste product strikes me as semantically incorrect. If it were being sold opportunistically, like a large proportion of it was going to waste but some was being sold, I would agree with that, but it seems like it's all being sold, right?
- rjsw 10y agoMy guess would be that the other distillate fractions from each barrel have been sold for a lot more.
- mschuster91 10y ago> Why is the refined product cheaper than the raw product? Because bunker fuel is the absolute waste that remains after the refinery distills all the valuable lighter fuel components (from pretty heavy kerosene all up the way to gasoline and even lighter). The stuff basically has no other use except as fuel for tankers... what refineries are doing here is, basically, selling waste they'd otherwise have to spend money to get rid of it. (On a sidenote, I can't imagine how one could get rid of bunker fuel except pumping it back where it came from)
- dredmorbius 10y agoWell, there's also petroleum coke, though you're broadly correct. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_coke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_coke
- jerkstate 10y agoCome to think of it, the same is true for gasoline. No other use for it than to run combustion engines. Turns out we are all doing those oil companies a pretty big favor, unless we used their product, they would have to pump all of those distillates back into the ground.
- pfarnsworth 10y agoWhat would be the economic repercussions if these ships were immediately shut down?
- dredmorbius 10y ago90% of everything. https://www.worldcat.org/title/inside-shipping-the-invisible-industry-that-brings-you-90-of-everything/oclc/879349083 https://www.worldcat.org/title/inside-shipping-the-invisible...
- userbinator 10y agoIt is interesting to note that the types of engines used in these large ships are among the most efficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumption#Examples_of_values_of_BSFC_for_shaft_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumptio... The pollution has more to do with the type of fuel used.
- dredmorbius 10y agoAnd lack of pollution controls.
- mc32 10y agoSince no country can regulate the seas, perhaps regulate your costal waters and heavily disincentivize these heavy polluters from docking in your ports -enough countries get on board and it becomes the rule, the tyranny of the minority as it were, because it's not as though other less regulating countries would regulate against less polluting ships.
- deepGem 10y agoIsn't it feasible for container ships to go electric ? They have such massive surface areas for batteries. I thought of solar but then the container loading/unloading aspects will become quite cumbersome, unless you could somehow put solar panels on individual container roofs and load those on the top. A logistical nightmare nonetheless. A crude search yields this about Emma Maersk, one of the largest container ships. She is powered by a Wärtsilä-Sulzer 14RTFLEX96-C engine, the world's largest single diesel unit, weighing 2,300 tonnes and capable of 81 MW (109,000 hp) when burning 14,000 litres (3,600 US gal)[31] of heavy fuel oil per hour. At economical speed, fuel consumption is 0.260 bs/hp·hour (1,660 gal/hour).[32] She has features to lower environmental damage, including exhaust heat recovery and cogeneration.[33] Some of the exhaust gases are returned to the engine to improve economy and lower emissions,[34] and some are passed through a steam generator which then powers a Peter Brotherhood steam turbine and electrical generators. This creates an electrical output of 8.5 MW,[35] equivalent to about 12% of the main engine power output. Some of this steam is used directly as shipboard heat.[36] Five diesel generators together produce 20.8 MW,[35] giving a total electric output of 29 MW.[26] Two 9 MW electric motors augment the power on the main propeller shaft So you need about 285 Tesla Models P100D motors to power a ship of this size. Doable I guess. Again, I'm no expert on shipping.
- ForHackernews 10y agoOne of the more interesting retro-futuristic ideas is to use wind power and large, high-altitude kites to help propel big oceangoing cargo ships: http://newatlas.com/cargill-ship-will-be-largest-ever-to-utilize-kite-power/18005/ http://newatlas.com/cargill-ship-will-be-largest-ever-to-uti...
- Retric 10y agoThese ships are a very poor place for battery's vs cars because of how infrequently they recharge and how efficient their engines are. They extract ~2.5x as much energy from their fuel so the real solution is changing fuels and adding a catalytic converter not battery's. PS: Remember, this pollution has a short half life, so it's simply not around that long.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
- wcoenen 10y agoThe article seems to imply in its first paragraph that sulfer dioxide is a greenhouse gas. But doesn't SO2 have a cooling effect on the climate? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfate_aerosols_(geoengineering) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_sulfate_aerosols...
- Bud 10y agoThis comment thread illustrates why HN posters shouldn't presume to write their own headlines for an article unless they really know what they are doing.
- ajarmst 10y agoThe lede is false and misleading on its face. Excluding "carbon dioxide" from your list of "oxides" when discussing (and comparing with) automobile greenhouse gas emissions is absurd. The misleading claim is also clearly intentional, so none of the other claims can be accepted at face value. (No, shutting down 15 ships would not do more to address greenhouse oxide emissions than banning automobiles world-wide.) More than disappointing, and never should have been published.
- rayiner 10y agoThis is why I don't consume news anymore except in connection with HN, Reddit, or Twitter. I'm convinced that one of the reasons journalists do such a crappy job of reporting on science is that they don't even realize that describing methodology and assumptions is more important than the punch line.
- dmoy 10y agoImportant is a relative thing though. The headline is more important... for attracting readers and getting ad dollars. Which is sadly the priority.
- massysett 10y agoI'd understand if you said you replaced the popular press with academic journals or books by scientists. But Reddit and Twitter? That's an improvement??
- rayiner 10y agoIf you scroll down on Reddit (and especially HN), there is usually a top comment providing missing context.
- mockery 10y agoThe article is titled "Green finance for dirty ships" - the misleading HN title (which doesn't show up anywhere in the article) _is_ the problem in this case, IMO.
- 10y ago
- goodcanadian 10y agoIt seems to me that many comments here are missing the point. To be fair, the article also seems to get it wrong. The problem with sulphur and nitrogen oxides isn't just global warming (though apparently N2O is a real problem, there). To my mind, the real problem is good old fashioned pollution as we talked about in the 80s. Acid rain, anyone?
- mikeash 10y agoI would argue that you are missing the point, although probably only by not being sufficiently cynical. Articles about how a handful of large ships pollute more than all the cars on the planet have been going around for years. They're almost always written to be highly misleading, to trick the reader into thinking that ships are far more important polluters than cars and that all the effort by environmentalists to clean up cars is either wasted or a scam. Note that the title (both on HN and on economist.com) has changed to something much more reasonable. It used to say something like: just 15 ships emit more pollution than all the cars in the world combined.
- goodcanadian 10y agoTo me it is almost self evident that the cars are a far more serious issue as far as global warming goes though I grant that might not be clear to all readers of the article. That is why I said that the article sort of misses the point. That does not mean that the pollution from these ships is not just as serious; it is just serious for other reasons, and yes, it really is a big deal. For my part, I don't think the article is trying to mislead or distract. The author is simply falling victim to the current bias of talking about every environmental problem in terms of global warming whether appropriate or not.
- tener 10y agoWhy not just tax them for the excessive pollution?
- malchow 10y agoWould anyone care to link to evidence that carbon dioxide causes an increase in temperatures? I'd be curious to read some of this literature.
- malchow 10y agoDownvoted twice already –– I'm just asking for some simple links to the literature.
- upofadown 10y agoThe downvoting is probably because your comment has nothing to do with the content of the article and is an obvious attempt to distract from the actual issue with an irrelevant discussion.
- doughj3 10y agoThese may be a good start: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
- CalChris 10y agoSlow steaming is an improvement and it saves quite a bit of bunker. But while bunker is cheap, it's really noxious; the Cosco Busan spilled bunker when it hit the Delta tower of the Bay Bridge. Boats are supposed to switch over to a cleaner fuel when they enter port. For example, Port of Oakland is upwind of residential housing in Oakland. So this is a public health issue. Even the terminal tractors (port trucks) idling are an issue. Hopefully they'll switch over to EVs: https://orangeev.com/ https://orangeev.com/ Boats are designed for a critical hull speed. Emma Maersk cruises at 31 mi/h on the open ocean. http://www.emma-maersk.com/specification/ http://www.emma-maersk.com/specification/ That bulbous nose on container ships sets up a counter bow wave to lower drag but only at a certain cruising speed. However, shippers weren't paying a premium for that higher speed and although it's more efficient for that hull it was still costly. So new boats are tuned to a more efficient lower speed (slow steaming) with less powerful engines and even older boats are getting hauled into dry dock and re-nosed for a lower speed. Overall shipping speeds are down and shipping costs are also down. http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/americas/the-economics-of-slow-steaming.html http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/americas/the-economics... While the new Panama Canal extension could be a fiasco in its own right (100 years later and not nearly as well built; it leaks) new canals could improve things. The Thai Canal could make the Suez route more competitive than the Panama route for Asia to Europe. Lastly, like airlines, it's really hard to make money in shipping. Witness the Hanjin bankruptcy: http://gcaptain.com/south-korea-court-hanjin-to-declare-bankruptcy-this-month/ http://gcaptain.com/south-korea-court-hanjin-to-declare-bank... The City of Oakland owns the Port of Oakland and we don't make much money off of it either. $16M/yr for both the airport and the port, last time I checked.
- eru 10y agoThough the low profit margins can be seen as a good thing and competition working. (That is if all the actual benefit goes to customer surplus.)
- CamelCaseName 10y agoThat's exactly how it is. Unfortunately the negative externality of pollution means there is an inefficiency. One way to fix this by applying a tax, or minimum environmental standards, but on an international scale it's not so simple.
- rs999gti 10y agoMaybe it's time to re-examine using nuclear reactors on cargo ships? https://www.flexport.com/blog/nuclear-powered-cargo-ships/ https://www.flexport.com/blog/nuclear-powered-cargo-ships/
- Tharkun 10y agoUnless you can design a nuclear cargo ship that's safe from being commandeered by pirates|terrorists|nutjobs, this will never happen.
- hellbanner 10y agoFlagged, use the given title from the page.
- Radle 10y ago"Carrying more than 90% of the world’s trade, ocean-going vessels produce just 3% of its greenhouse-gas emissions." The article says itself, shipping is super efficient.
- caseysoftware 10y agoSo combine that with the next sentence: By burning heavy fuel oil, just 15 of the biggest ships emit more oxides of nitrogen and sulphur—gases much worse for global warming than carbon dioxide—than all the world’s cars put together. So all of the world's cars produce less than 3% of greenhouse gas emissions? Sounds like we should work at optimizing other parts of the system. (Eg. When you're trying to improve speed/throughput of a system, you focus on the bigger chunks first, not where < 3% of the work is done.)
- vickychijwani 10y agoYou're ignoring the possibility that cars may emit only tiny amounts of sulphur and nitrogen oxides, compared to ships whose emissions are largely made up of those gases. That would be consistent with both sentences, although I don't know if it's true. EDIT: Looks like that is indeed true, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716251
- seizethecheese 10y agoWarning: I'm totally ignorant on the subject. It seems like oil gets refined with gasoline going to cars and heavier fuels going to ships. Can we really say that cars are so much cleaner? Their fuel is surely subsidized by a market for the heavier fuels.
- macmac 10y agoYou are not crazy and this is exactly the right way to view the problem.
- maxerickson 10y agoA lot of the heavier fraction is cracked into gasoline. Refineries play both sides of the market, specializing to take certain types of oil as input and then working their process and the various destination markets to maximize their return. Here's one entry point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
- upofadown 10y ago>just 15 of the biggest ships emit more oxides of nitrogen and sulphur—gases much worse for global warming than carbon dioxide... Oxides of sulphur are not greenhouse gasses. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas but it doesn't come from burning fuel. These links go into the actual reasons these sorts of pollutants are bad: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Environmental_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Environmental_effects * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide#As_an_air_pollutant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide#As_an_air_pollu... Interestingly enough, there is some thought that nitrogen oxide emissions from ships actually cause global cooling.
- ianai 10y agoThese ships could be nuclear powered - like subs/other vessels are already. That ought to make a huge impact on carbon footprint.
- brianwawok 10y agoOh that is good, right through pirate infested waters with no armed crew?
- kevincox 10y agoYou can make non-weaponizable nuclear power.
- brianwawok 10y agoAnd non explodable? Citation?
- ianai 10y agoYes, and it's not like staffing ships with security would hurt anybody's cost structure. Especially once they're not filling it with oil.
- WalterBright 10y agoI read 30 years ago that some cargo ships were being equipped with computer operated sails, which would substantially reduce fuel use. I wonder what happened to that.
- lsseckman 10y agoSeems sails for ships this size would either be unwieldy in port, too little volume for much impact in locomotion, or too costly to maintain.
- richdougherty 10y ago"The problem, he adds, is one of incentives. Ship owners, who would normally borrow for such upgrades, do not benefit from lower fuel bills. It is the firms chartering the vessels that enjoy the savings. But their contracts are not long enough to make it worthwhile to invest in green upgrades. The average retrofit has a payback time of three years, whereas 80% of ship charters are for two years or less." "Hence the interest in new green-lending structures. ... The idea is to share the fuel savings between the shipowner and the charterer over a longer contract, giving both an incentive to make the upgrades. Such schemes used to be thwarted by the difficulty of measuring exact fuel consumption on ships. New technologies allow more accurate readings." This is the exact same problem that arises in landlord/tenant relationships when it comes to things like insulating a property. Insulation might be relatively cheap and pay itself back in a few years. But the landlord doesn't have an incentive to insulate because the benefit goes to the tenant. The current tenant also won't insulate because they'll probably leave before they can realise all the benefit of their investment. In theory, landlords or shipowners should have an incentive to invest, since it should improve their property and therefore allow them to increase their rents or charter fees, but for some reason this doesn't happen. Possibly consumers can't accurately assess the value of improvements so they are reluctant to pay more. The measurement devices mentioned should allow both parties to have a more accurate way to share in the benefits. It's a complicated dance of incentives and information... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
- lsseckman 10y agoWish they had gone into more detail on this. It seems like a solid competitive advantage for the owners to offer lower fuel consumption & therefore a cheaper charter. Easy. Anyone know if there are similar upgrades that can be applied to smaller ships?
- hendler 10y agoCheckout "Freightened" - https://vimeo.com/202104276 https://vimeo.com/202104276
- reacweb 10y agoIncrease the price of petrol. Many conflicts in the world are related to petrol. A significant part of military budget can be seen as a subsidize to petrol. There should be enough taxes to compensate all these hidden costs.
- alphapapa 10y agoWouldn't increasing the price increase scarcity, making it an even more contentious resource, thereby increasing conflict? On the other hand, a widely available, cheap resource is not worth fighting over.