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Forty percent of the world’s shipping consists of fossil fuels to be burned

• bratwurst3000 5y ago
  Want to go bananas? Cargo shipping is as mouch as oil shipping and the most shipped goods are bananas… https://www.eurosender.com/blog/en/most-shipped-items/ https://www.eurosender.com/blog/en/most-shipped-items/
  • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    I will never understand the banana market. How the hell are bananas so damn cheap? It is bananas to me!
    • Kye 5y ago
      Monocropping! They keep coming up with new bananas to deal with overproduction making them extinct. edit: The two people who downvoted probably think this is a joke. It is not.
    • Synaesthesia 5y ago
      The history of it is very interesting. They were unknown to the world until the United Fruit company marketed them globally. Of course they also ruled very harshly in central america, hence term banana republic.
    • bserge 5y ago
      They're really good at ripening on the go? I have no idea, they cost about the same in Europe from Ireland to Romania, which is rather insane. On that note, walnuts are so expensive, meanwhile they grow literally everywhere around here with no special care or anything.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Walnuts can have very big differences in quality. Yielding a consistent high quality is not cheap.
        • bserge 5y ago
          I've got around 10kg of them from a couple of trees in my garden. I've done zero maintenance, they're just there to keep other shit from growing (walnut trees poison the soil, most weeds stop growing, also because of the shade). All "high quality", the same stuff you get in stores. Walnut trees are used on roadsides, they're perfect for it, zero maintenance, keeps the soil from moving/sliding and kills weeds. Random people just harvest them if they want to. The store prices on them make no sense. Just like bananas :D
          • deleted 5y ago
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          • bratwurst3000 5y ago
            Since some years I just collect walnuts for the whole year and the price puzzled me since… have 25kg+ wallnuts in like 2h. And the fun to be outdoors.
      • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
        I don't understand why nuts are so expensive. They sell for almost 10x their wholesale price. They wholesale for ~$1.70 per pound. Peanuts wholesale for ~$0.25 per pound. Yet walnuts sell for like ~$12 per pound and peanuts sell for ~$3 per pound. Most foods that have sell for 10x wholesale price are delicate AND perishable, so a ton of that food goes to waste. Also, grocers reject a lot because of looks. None of this is true with nuts. So why do they retail for 10x wholesale price? I know technically, it's closer to 5x - since they usually retail blanched and the shell is half the weight. Still...
        • bserge 5y ago
          Yeah, they're way too expensive. So is honey, by the way. I get great fresh honey from local beekeepers for like 5 times less than local store price.
      • beerandt 5y ago
        They're shipped in oxygen free containers to prevent ripening and bruises while in transit, and then are over oxygenated to quickly ripen once unloaded to dockside facilities. Before that, shipping distances were limited and the majority of what was unloaded had to be trashed before making it to market. Only one interesting aspect of an extremely interesting historical topic. Highly recommend starting with the story of Samuel Zemurray for those interested in the topic, who sold his company to united fruit then promptly turned around and took charge of it for the next twenty years in a hostile takeover.
    • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      They are paid for in blood. For example, when workers in Collumbia went on a strike, US government got involved, decladed the strike 'communist' and 2000 people were massacred. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre
  • NavinF 5y ago
    That site is pretty sketchy. No sources and no numbers. I also have a hard time believing that “Artwork and Sculptures” is #3. Maybe I live in a bubble, but do people really buy physical art more than once a year? Like I’ve commissioned digital art on several occasions, but I can’t imagine art being a significant chunk of anyone’s spending.
    • Too 5y ago
      I bet by count of items jewelery and other Etsy artwork list pretty high, but no way in total volume since they are all very small. Sounds more like a cover category people use to avoid duty taxes. Or the site is completely making up statistic on the spot, looks quite sketchy indeed. There is also concerts and trade fairs shipping a lot of what could be considered artwork around the world.
      • bratwurst3000 5y ago
        Hehe yes this site aint trustworthy at all… just wanted to make a joke :). But bananas are rly in the top 3 cargo shipped goods on most lists Art is used to lounder money … I dont know how much of that makes it via cargo but it has to be something. And sometimes cars and other big things are art. One artwork could easy fit one container … oh and 3d printed stuff. Company have to ship that too …. But arts ranking seems way to high….but searched for us imports and found this … https://www.titlemax.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/the-most-shipped-items-4_tmx.jpg https://www.titlemax.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/the-most...
• guerby 5y ago
  I wonder what will happen when shipping switch to e-fuels (or any other non fossil), will it be produced on ports directly or shipped again? Some links: * Maersk Makes $1.4B Bet on Methanol Ships https://gcaptain.com/maersk-new-methanol-ships/ https://gcaptain.com/maersk-new-methanol-ships/ * financing https://gcaptain.com/maersk-issues-first-green-bond-to-help-fund-methanol-powered-newbuilds/ https://gcaptain.com/maersk-issues-first-green-bond-to-help-... * engine https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-details/2021/08/25/milestone-order-for-world-s-largest-methanol-dual-fuel-engine https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-details/... "This is a massive milestone as these engines will be the largest methanol-burning engines ever constructed. They will be based on their well-proven 50-bore counterpart, which has already been in our engine portfolio for some time gathering more than 100,000 running hours on methanol alone." * https://www.iea-amf.org/app/webroot/files/file/Annex%20Reports/AMF_Annex_56.pdf https://www.iea-amf.org/app/webroot/files/file/Annex%20Repor... * https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/08/24/maersk-accelerates-fleet-decarbonisation https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/08/24/maersk-accel... "" In the first quarter of 2024, A.P. Moller - Maersk will introduce the first in a groundbreaking series of 8 large ocean-going container vessels capable of being operated on carbon neutral methanol. The vessels will be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and have a nominal capacity of approx. 16,000 containers TEU"" * https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/08/18/maersk-secures-green-e-methanol https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/08/18/maersk-secur... ""The methanol facility will use renewable energy and biogenic CO2 to produce the e-methanol. The fuel production is expected to start in 2023. The energy needed for the power-to-methanol production will be provided by a solar farm in Kassø, Southern Denmark. " * process https://info.topsoe.com/emethanol https://info.topsoe.com/emethanol "The required electrical input will depend on how the hydrogen is sourced, and whether the methanol process is integrated into an existing plant or a stand-alone plant. If the hydrogen is sourced from an electrolysis unit, the power consumption (for hydrogen generation only) will be approximately 10.5 MWh per ton methanol." * process https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/methanol-synthesis https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/methanol-sy... "Transport Fuel, Arno de Klerk, in Future Energy (Third Edition), 2020 "Methanol synthesis, Eq. (10.9), is a very exothermic reaction" "With water-cooled reactor designs, higher once-through conversion is possible,"
  • 5y ago
• newyankee 5y ago
  Also of note is the fact that transportation of gas is a major part of its final price even when the mode is pipeline. There is a sweet spot of distance for which natural gas is competitive IIRC.
  • beerandt 5y ago
    Historically true, but Liquefied NG has turned the economics of the industry on its head in regards to where shipping makes financial sense.
• rob74 5y ago
  My nitpicking brain immediately stumbled over these two consecutive sentences: > something very close to forty percent of all the shipping on earth is just devoted to getting oil and coal and gas (and now some wood pellets) back and forth across the ocean. Wood pellets are not fossil fuels though... > That’s a remarkable snapshot: almost half of what we move around the seas is not finished products (cars) nor even the raw materials to make them (steel), but simply the stuff that we burn to power those transformations, and to keep ourselves warmed, cooled, and lit. Oil is also a raw material, e.g. to make plastic. Not sure about what percentage is used as raw material vs. how much is used for fuel...
  • londons_explore 5y ago
    Wood pellets are shipped across the ocean in large quantities because of a loophole in carbon accounting, allowing coal power stations to burn wood pellets across the EU, 'carbon free', as long as the wood came from outside the EU.
    • guerby 5y ago
      Interesting! Do you have a reliable source for this?
      • londons_explore 5y ago
        https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/ https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/axedrax-campaign/ (biased source, but nobody seems to disagree with their wood source claims)
      • adpcm 5y ago
        Wood pellets are counted as renewable. Creating something of loophole. Not sure what difference non-EU would make other than making tracking of regrowing trees more difficult. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/europe-burns-controversial-renewable-energy-trees-from-us https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/europ...
• nine_k 5y ago
  The scoop: by tonnage, 40% of what is transported by sea is oil, coal, and LNG. By switching to local sources of energy (renewables mostly), humanity can seriously lower the impact of ships on the oceans, and stop burning as much fuel to move them, too. I'd like to add that all these fuels are very energy-dense. Producing as much energy locally would not be an easy or inexpensive enterprise.
  • epistasis 5y ago
    Already, solar is the cheapest source of energy, and is still in the exponentially decreasing phase of the tech curve.
    • nine_k 5y ago
      Batteries need to shape up, though. Huge battery installations should become cheap and ubiquitous; so far they are neither. A number of interesting chemistries exist that would suit well the needs of stationary batteries, which can be heavy and bulky, but need to be cheap and safe. As usual, more time and money are needed :)
      • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Note that if batteries stayed at their current level of development forever, wind and solar would still be the best choice to build out at large scales today. It is unlikely that they wont progress dramatically, but even in that extreme case there's no need or reason to wait.
        • criley2 5y ago
          This is sadly wishful thinking. The unreliability of solar and wind plus the state of modern batteries means that nuclear and coal are still better choices for large scale baseload generation. One factor people don't consider is reliability of power. Since solar and wind are unreliable (example, German wind power saw -25% generation last year due to weather, and ended up increasing coal by as much as 40 to 50% to make up for it plus meet new demand) you end up needing to produce significantly more to have a guarantee of baseload. For every bit of ultra-reliable, ultra-safe, tiny-footprint nuclear you build out, you need ~4X the amount of less reliable and giant foot print solar or wind.
• cft 5y ago
  What percentage of fossil fuels consumption is fuel for shipping of fossil fuels?
  • thesimp 5y ago
    Using the below url as a guide the fuel consumption per amount of fuel transported is actually very economical. Deadweight: 442,470dwt, Lightweight: 67,000t = 375,470t of cargo. Fuel usage 141t per day. With a 15 day trip that would mean using 2,115t of fuel to get 375,470t of crude to its destination. https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/ultra-large-crude-carrier-hellespont-alhambra https://www.wartsila.com/encyclopedia/term/ultra-large-crude...
    • guerby 5y ago
      I assume you have to count the empty ship return, or at least some empty part of the trip if it's not a direct return to the fossil fuel export port.
• epistasis 5y ago
  > Hell, eleven percent of the energy that America currently uses, according to Saul Griffith’s excellent book Electrify, simply goes to finding more energy. That's a pretty shocking stat too! The energy transition is about to thrust us into a world where for long periods of time, we have massive energy abundance of zero-marginal cost energy generation. It won't be free to transmit that energy, and the intermittent nature of the abundance will play hell with most capital intensive uses (eg crypto mining), but I'm super curious to see what new capabilities that people figure out for humanity.
  • nine_k 5y ago
    One of my bets is on synthesizing more hydrocarbons from water and CO₂, because planes and helicopters will still mostly run on it.
    • lapinot 5y ago
      Surely that's much easier and less ressource intensive than using less planes and helicopters.
      • thepangolino 5y ago
      • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
        It doesn't matter how energy intensive it is. If people are willing to pay a premium (they are), there will be a market. Right now, the market is artificially big, because you don't have to pay for the negative externalities of carbon.
        • londons_explore 5y ago
          > you don't have to pay for the negative externalities of carbon. We aren't yet seeing much indication that there will be a global tax/fee on the externalities of carbon. That means even if local policies are implemented for certain cases (eg. no gas cars in the city, no coal power in one state), there will always be somewhere on earth willing to burn dirty coal to make helicopter fuel for export.
• gotamas 5y ago
  Shipping is primiarily about volume, not tonnage. The density of a container full of tennis rackets is much smaller than brent. If we were comparing volume percentage, the fossil fuel might not be so high.
• aronpye 5y ago
  > “ Yes, you’ll need transmission lines to move electrons around, but they are far less dangerous and intrusive.” Yeah … California Says PG&E Power Lines Caused Camp Fire That Killed 85 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/business/pge-fire.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/business/pge-fire.html
  • mint2 5y ago
    It’s a valid point and yet given it’s pge we’d have to mention they blew up people in San Bruno due to their shoddy natural gas pipeline so we might need examples from outside pge to check that it’s not just an awful safety culture and poor maintenance makes anything unsafe. But yes in principe lines can start fires or electrocute people, squirrels, and Mylar balloons
    • aronpye 5y ago
      > it’s not just an awful safety culture and poor maintenance makes anything unsafe. I agree, I just felt that the original article was being disingenuous by stating that power lines are somehow safer than fossil fuel infrastructure just because it’s not fossil fuel. Whereas it is more about your point on safety culture, where both can be equally as safe or dangerous if managed incorrectly.
• mxschumacher 5y ago
  the more intermittent energy generation is in a grid, the more balancing mechanisms, either storage or flexible generation, will be required. As both generation and consumption have to be balanced in real-time (at close to 100% reliability no less!), we have quite a challenge on our hands. There are hard limits in physics, geology and in regards to cost for grid-scale lithium-ion batteries (for detailed reasoning and the role hydrogen might play, please refer to this excellent talk from UC Davis: [3]), especially as the global roll-out of EVs is simultaneously under way. Long story short: more solar & wind is bad news for coal but great news for natural gas (especially in regions like the coastal US and Germany where a phase out of nuclear is ongoing). In the western world, we can eventually shift away from burning fossil fuels (low population growth and off shoring of energy intense manufacturing helps), but globally the demand for fossil fuels is still growing quickly. It's hard to overstate just how much of a revolution LNG (liquefied natural gas) has been and is - for the longest time you could only use natural gas directly if you were connected to a source via pipeline. Western Europe was almost entirely dependent on Russia for example. Now, a global market has evolved. Nigerian gas can be shipped to Brazil when a drought limits Hydropower capacity, gas from Trinidad-Tobago is burned in Massachusetts to compensate for limitations imposed by the Jones Act and lacking pipeline connections to the nearby Marcellus shale [0], Australian gas powers industry in South Korea and Japan - countries that don't have substantial energy resources. It has gotten harder to strong-arm consumers, as they now have many suppliers to choose from and countries like India are making gigantic bets on natural gas for the coming decades [1] longer term, we should expect a changing power balance and better energy availability around the world. Replacing coal-fired capacity with cleaner burning natural gas is the biggest, fastest gain we can aim for when trying to combat local pollution and global co2 emissions (though methane leaks have to be brought under control!). Nuclear is a tough sell politically (even though that seems to be changing in some areas and the solar/wind capacity roll-out is already moving quickly. Given that the global population is expected to be north of 10 billion in 2060 - 38 years from now - and that the average disposable income should get a very substantial boost, the energy demand of humanity is still on an aggressive upward trajectory. I would not count Exxon out just yet, if you read their 10K (annual report) [2], you get the sense that they have a deep awareness of renewable energy deployments around the world. Given the cost advantages of oil (think of it as liquid batteries) and the centrality of natural gas in our economic system, I don't think ships, pipelines and trucks moving fossil fuels will disappear anytime soon. [0] https://doomberg.substack.com/p/new-england-is-an-energy-crisis-waiting https://doomberg.substack.com/p/new-england-is-an-energy-cri... [1] https://www.investindia.gov.in/sector/oil-gas/natural-gas https://www.investindia.gov.in/sector/oil-gas/natural-gas [2] https://ir.exxonmobil.com/static-files/29f8cfbf-6158-49b2-b2da-53a617525b72 https://ir.exxonmobil.com/static-files/29f8cfbf-6158-49b2-b2... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ykv_0N-bRc&t=922s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ykv_0N-bRc&t=922s
• joshspankit 5y ago
  Question: How much fossil fuel is used to ship those fossil fuels? Boats burn it, don’t they?
  • lmm 5y ago
    Very little. Modern transport ships are astonishingly efficient.
    • joshspankit 5y ago
      Right on, that’s good news
• ck2 5y ago
  Not only is it making some very bad actors very wealthy for centuries to come, think of all the political power in play to ensure it continues forever. I mean they still allow/use LEADED fuel in aircraft everywhere in 2022 despite everything horrifying we know about that now. It's not just a lack of care for health of a population, there has to be some serious profit/politics in that decision. Electrons can have so many flexible sources and all can be relatively local. Stop subsidizing burning things, make it cost what it really costs.
  • hiptobecubic 5y ago
    Making things first what they really cost would solve a lot of problems, but no one actually wants that. Certainly not enough people to matter. Civilization is built on loans from future citizens. I think the only reason most people who clamor about "balancing the budget" don't push for environmental improvements is that they know they will be dead before it really matters.
  • jessaustin 5y ago
    ...they still allow/use LEADED fuel in aircraft everywhere in 2022 despite everything horrifying we know about that now. It's not just a lack of care for health of a population, there has to be some serious profit/politics in that decision. This specific complaint is kind of silly, since there is no "population" at risk in the aviation context. The use of tetraethyl lead for a single day by automobiles in urban areas where children live was worse for human health than its use for decades at aviation elevations over wilderness where most aircraft spend most of their operating time. There could be concentrations around airports I guess, but those would be better dealt with by local regulations than by a blanket ban. It is good for humanity that aircraft built in the 1940s are still in use today. Obsoleting all those engines would be harmful.
• wombatmobile 5y ago
  > These kinds of changes are not cost-free: people who drove oil trucks will need to find other jobs, and we should help them make the transition. Who is “we”? If it isn’t the people who own the oil trucks, how is it going to happen? So far, the “we” hasn’t been them, and that’s one reason it’s taking so long to happen.
• nabla9 5y ago
  Energy return on investment EROI = [energy delivered]/[energy to deliver that energy] Hydrocarbons are getting close to Net energy cliff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Net_energy_cliff.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Net_energy_cliff.gif
• burntoutfire 5y ago
  > if and when we make the transition to solar power and windpower I love people who write about transitioning to full renewables as if it's something that's inevitably going to happen. Meanwhile, we still don't have the tech to make it even close to economically viable. Maybe we'll get there at some point, maybe we won't - but there's a whole subgenre of pundits who are already speculating about second-order consequences of such full-renewable world (in the same manner as in around 2017 or so everyone was speculating about the world in which self-driving cars are a reality, how many jobs it will cost etc.). Also, the author is evidently counting wood towards fossil fuels, which shows that his understanding of what a fossil is is lacking.
  • sailingparrot 5y ago
    > we still don't have the tech to make it even close to economically viable. ...What? Solar and wind are the cheapest source of energy, and still rapidly getting cheaper. Here is a nicely done deck talking about the cost of all things renewabl: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6qr9x1zhvc4yq7/Naam%20Clean%20Energy%20Revolution%20-%20Chinese%20Edition%20-%20Shareable%20-%20Jan%202022.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/l6qr9x1zhvc4yq7/Naam%20Clean%20Ene...
    • burntoutfire 5y ago
      They might be viable on cost per kWh basis, but you also need storage if you want to rely on renewable during off-peaks. Right now, there's no economically viable solution for it.
• credit_guy 5y ago
  Forty percent by what? Mass, volume, or dollar value? Most likely (gosh, the article is so long form, I can't find out) it's dollar value, other types of comparison are nonsensical. But then this is dependent on the oil price. Right now it's about $80/barrel, but the median price for the last 5 years was about $50/barrel. For liquefied natural gas (LNG) the current price is about $10/thousand cubic feet, but the median over the last 5 years was about $5.
  • howdydoo 5y ago
    If you really want to know, the answer is right at the top of the article. I won't do your homework for you. Maybe someone else will.
• grouphugs 5y ago
• rhacker 5y ago
  So, in a sense, the world is going to run out of everything because too many people are trying to fit a bunch of 0's on the end of a short string.
• truthwhisperer 5y ago
• _8j50 5y ago
  Given this, what are the ecological oppositions to things like keystone XL? I've also wondered if it is feasible for renewable sources like offshore windfarms and very remote nuke powerplants to charge continually flowing battery trains to populated areas.
  • dundarious 5y ago
    Keystone XL is totally irrelevant wrt shipping (as in, ships on the water). Keystone XL goes from Alberta to Kansas, and is just a shorter route than an existing pipeline connecting those two points. Rail is another common transport for oil between these points. Regardless, the article comes to a better conclusion, IMO: > Because it means that if and when we make the transition to solar power and windpower, we will not just stop pouring carbon into the atmosphere, and not just save money—we will also reduce the number of ships sailing back and forth by almost half.
• ahthat 5y ago
  I feel the author is forgetting that anything made out of plastic comes from oil derivatives. Another reason oil is an incredible resource. Can anyone comment on this?