4 ms·

Could we dredge the Netherlands without fossil fuels? (2018)

63 points by at1as 1mo ago

sgt101 1mo ago
[dead]
BigTTYGothGF 1mo ago
> those ships would require enormous chemical batteries In many cases they can't be all that far from land, could one set up a way to run wires? I also wonder about the possibility for some kind of permanent installation in select places, where small amounts of sediment are continually removed (as opposed to large amounts of sediment occasionally removed). Being permanent means you can hook it up to the grid.
- smallerize 1mo ago
  The Netherlands uses the largest and most powerful dredging ship in the world, The Queen of the Netherlands. Each of the dredging pumps are 8,000 horsepower (6 MW) and there are two of them. Even the short-range ship-to-shore connections used by container ships are in the 2 MW range. Running "wires" would be ambitious.
  - cenamus 1mo ago
    Those giant bucket wheel excavators are also electrically powered, by cables. And they use up to 16 MW, so I wouldn't call it completely unrealistic. Of course running them over some dirt is easier than through possibly moving water, but still.
    - gehsty 1mo ago
      cables can get pretty big, you could run maybe 75-90MW through a 66kV 1200mm2 Cu offshore wind array cable, maybe 500MW through a 275kV 2000mm2 cu export cable and 1.3GW through a 320kV hvdc bipole set of cables (2GW through 525kv HVDC!) - you would just have the minor inconvenience of convertors and or substations to deal with at either end ;)
      - cenamus 25d ago
        Yeah, I think they usually move them with tractors that have a special attachment that sort of holds them
  - quickthrowman 1mo ago
    > Running "wires" would be ambitious. It’s definitely possible, I don’t have an in depth knowledge of ships connected to shore power with cables, but if the distance isn’t too great, it seems possible. Raising voltage lowers the ampacity to allow for smaller conductors. 6MW at 7200V is only ~500A, 6MW at 13.8kV is only 250A. There are massive electric powered hydraulic mining machines that operate connected to power cables.
    - amoshebb 1mo ago
      We already have 25kV for rail electrification which move 6MW all over the place, surely at boat speeds making some strange double-pantograph system for shipping could be strung up alongside most of the canals, maybe electric tugs could be used as well as normal shipping?
      - quickthrowman 1mo ago
        > surely at boat speeds making some strange double-pantograph system for shipping could be strung up alongside most of the canals, maybe electric tugs could be used as well as normal shipping? I like it, very similar to how mules used to pull barges thru canals except with electrical cables and a rail pantograph running on distribution lines next to the canal instead of mules and ropes.
      - Symbiote 1mo ago
        High speed trains can be over 16MW on 25kV AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_374 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_374 (16MW) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Series_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Series_Shinkansen (18MW)
- Cthulhu_ 1mo ago
  For canals, I'd say yes. I mean related, before steam / fossil / etc we'd have a "trekschuit", which was a canal boat pulled by people and / or animals that walked on a path alongside the canals. Wired propulsion, if you will. I can see a system similar to trains/trams but for ships would work.
throwawayffffas 1mo ago
You do know you can burn stuff that is not dug up from the ground right? From ethanol to sun flower and coconut oil. You can pretty much just pour them in a gas tank and the engine will just work.
- seiferteric 1mo ago
  Good point, liquid and gas fuels will continue to be important into the future where energy density is needed, fuel cells could be a good option also.
- zahlman 1mo ago
  Depending on the engine, perhaps. But this still releases CO2. This is not about supply limitations.
  - hakimg 1mo ago
    These are carbon neutral as they remove atmospheric CO2 when the plant matter is grown
    - IrishTechie 1mo ago
      The savings in CO2 emissions for the likes of rapeseed, sunflower etc per MJ of energy is only around 50% compared to diesel. You have to release a lot of CO2 to grow these crops intensively. And that’s before you even consider where the land for these crops come from, potentially chopping down CO2 absorbing rainforests in many sorts of the world. Biofuel from Used Cooking Oil is worthy considering for sure, but the quantities possible are tiny compared to the petrol/diesel we use.
- Tagbert 1mo ago
  All too often those have bad environmental impacts of their own. Coconut oil ends up being grown in plantains that require clear cutting natural forests. The agricultural process to plant, grow and harvest sunflowers produces significant CO2 just as it does for growing corn for ethanol.
an_account 1mo ago
Electricity generated from wind and solar with some wires to the dredge would be way easier than dredging by hand. Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. The historical aspects of this article are a good read though. Very interesting technology.
- retired 1mo ago
  I kinda like the idea of using prison labour for environmentally friendly dredging. But The Netherlands abolish prison slave labour in 2021 so that is no longer possible.
  - thangalin 1mo ago
    https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-role-dutch-criminal-justice-system-study-finds https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-rol... "People from minority groups are relatively more often suspected of crimes that are more likely to end in a prison sentence. There is also a higher average number of charges against people from minority groups. On the socio-economic scale, people with an immigration background are more likely to be in vulnerable positions with lower education levels. "The origin of a suspect influences the outcomes of the criminal proceedings against them. 'This may indicate conscious or unconscious discrimination, which goes against the principle of the rule of law, in which everyone has an equal chance of fair treatment,' the researchers said."
    - test6554 1mo ago
      It seems like someone with an immigration background should have to go through an on-boarding period where a new arrival takes part in community service and is immersed with civic-minded people and good citizens rather than just heading straight for the slums to fend for themselves and live among the sorts of people who will be a bad influence on them.
      - kelseyfrog 1mo ago
amelius 1mo ago
Reminded me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1Af96gYVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1Af96gYVI "The insane plan to dam the North Sea."
arjie 1mo ago
I think, crucially, we cannot do so without damaging the environment even without fossil fuels. In time, presumably environmental concerns will result in sufficient acceleration of depolderization until the Netherlands no longer has such a large environmental damage footprint. Fortunately, they have made strides on this[0] but in time they will hopefully mitigate the terrible damage they have done here. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
fragmede 1mo ago
I wanna plug Fervo energy, as advanced geothermal, where they've got a plant in the US where it's up and running. They tunnel into the Earth and use that to heat up water, and use that temperature differential to generate electricity. Expertise in drilling oil wells can be translated into drilling geothermal pipes instead!
- lstodd 1mo ago
  How many wells (and how deep) and on what area one needs for a 1 (one) GWe sustained over 100 years? Timespan is critical too you know, you are cooling the rock below, so heat flow must be kept constant over the life of the plant. Any numbers for that?
jillesvangurp 1mo ago
The honest answer is that this is one of the edge cases that will probably electrified late. There are of course a lot of other use cases where electrification is a lot easier and more doable (e.g. tug boats are already being electrified). There are probably a few practical ways it could be done economically. One simple way that comes to mind is to use battery ships that connect to the main ship via cables. Those could move back and forth between charging spots and act as a mobile power supply. The question then becomes how much battery can be fitted on these ships and the practicalities of connecting ships with cables. 1mwh is about ~4 tonnes at current energy densities. Small barges commonly carry hundreds of tonnes of freight. Another obvious one is using small nuclear reactors. Not a popular solution with environmentalists but doable technically. Bio fuels are an alternative to fossil fuels. In the same way hydrogen or derived fuels are a valid alternative. More expensive than fossil fuels, but it would work. And if you apply system thinking here, a valid question is whether using more but smaller ships could work. People are getting hung up on electrifying the same huge ship. The only reason that huge ship is economical is the economies of scale you get with large engines and relatively expensive fossil fuels. As the article notes, dredging is something that used to be done manually and assisted by wind power. So, it can be done. It's just a lot more labor intensive that way. But we have ways to make these more autonomous now. So, an army of smaller battery operated dredge robots might replace a big dredging ship. They'd be moving back and forth between charge points and where the action is. It all boils down to cost, economics, and practicalities.
tim333 1mo ago
>those ships would require enormous chemical batteries, which is not practical or sustainable Since 2018 when the article was written the cost of batteries has dropped about 50% https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline. And will probably do another 50%+ with sodium ion batteries that use common and abundant materials. A human working at a normal kind of rate probably does about 2 kWh worth of work in a day or similar to a $200 battery which can be recharged for <$1. Batteries would be way cheaper than human labour already and similar to the cost of diesel.

63 points by at1as 1mo ago

[dead]

> those ships would require enormous chemical batteries In many cases they can't be all that far from land, could one set up a way to run wires? I also wonder about the possibility for some kind of permanent installation in select places, where small amounts of sediment are continually removed (as opposed to large amounts of sediment occasionally removed). Being permanent means you can hook it up to the grid.

smallerize 1mo ago
The Netherlands uses the largest and most powerful dredging ship in the world, The Queen of the Netherlands. Each of the dredging pumps are 8,000 horsepower (6 MW) and there are two of them. Even the short-range ship-to-shore connections used by container ships are in the 2 MW range. Running "wires" would be ambitious.
- cenamus 1mo ago
  Those giant bucket wheel excavators are also electrically powered, by cables. And they use up to 16 MW, so I wouldn't call it completely unrealistic. Of course running them over some dirt is easier than through possibly moving water, but still.
  - gehsty 1mo ago
    cables can get pretty big, you could run maybe 75-90MW through a 66kV 1200mm2 Cu offshore wind array cable, maybe 500MW through a 275kV 2000mm2 cu export cable and 1.3GW through a 320kV hvdc bipole set of cables (2GW through 525kv HVDC!) - you would just have the minor inconvenience of convertors and or substations to deal with at either end ;)
    - cenamus 25d ago
      Yeah, I think they usually move them with tractors that have a special attachment that sort of holds them
- quickthrowman 1mo ago
  > Running "wires" would be ambitious. It’s definitely possible, I don’t have an in depth knowledge of ships connected to shore power with cables, but if the distance isn’t too great, it seems possible. Raising voltage lowers the ampacity to allow for smaller conductors. 6MW at 7200V is only ~500A, 6MW at 13.8kV is only 250A. There are massive electric powered hydraulic mining machines that operate connected to power cables.
  - amoshebb 1mo ago
    We already have 25kV for rail electrification which move 6MW all over the place, surely at boat speeds making some strange double-pantograph system for shipping could be strung up alongside most of the canals, maybe electric tugs could be used as well as normal shipping?
    - quickthrowman 1mo ago
      > surely at boat speeds making some strange double-pantograph system for shipping could be strung up alongside most of the canals, maybe electric tugs could be used as well as normal shipping? I like it, very similar to how mules used to pull barges thru canals except with electrical cables and a rail pantograph running on distribution lines next to the canal instead of mules and ropes.
    - Symbiote 1mo ago
      High speed trains can be over 16MW on 25kV AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_374 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_374 (16MW) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Series_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Series_Shinkansen (18MW)
Cthulhu_ 1mo ago
For canals, I'd say yes. I mean related, before steam / fossil / etc we'd have a "trekschuit", which was a canal boat pulled by people and / or animals that walked on a path alongside the canals. Wired propulsion, if you will. I can see a system similar to trains/trams but for ships would work.

throwawayffffas 1mo ago

You do know you can burn stuff that is not dug up from the ground right? From ethanol to sun flower and coconut oil. You can pretty much just pour them in a gas tank and the engine will just work.

seiferteric 1mo ago
Good point, liquid and gas fuels will continue to be important into the future where energy density is needed, fuel cells could be a good option also.
zahlman 1mo ago
Depending on the engine, perhaps. But this still releases CO2. This is not about supply limitations.
- hakimg 1mo ago
  These are carbon neutral as they remove atmospheric CO2 when the plant matter is grown
  - IrishTechie 1mo ago
    The savings in CO2 emissions for the likes of rapeseed, sunflower etc per MJ of energy is only around 50% compared to diesel. You have to release a lot of CO2 to grow these crops intensively. And that’s before you even consider where the land for these crops come from, potentially chopping down CO2 absorbing rainforests in many sorts of the world. Biofuel from Used Cooking Oil is worthy considering for sure, but the quantities possible are tiny compared to the petrol/diesel we use.
Tagbert 1mo ago
All too often those have bad environmental impacts of their own. Coconut oil ends up being grown in plantains that require clear cutting natural forests. The agricultural process to plant, grow and harvest sunflowers produces significant CO2 just as it does for growing corn for ethanol.

an_account 1mo ago

Electricity generated from wind and solar with some wires to the dredge would be way easier than dredging by hand. Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future. The historical aspects of this article are a good read though. Very interesting technology.

retired 1mo ago
I kinda like the idea of using prison labour for environmentally friendly dredging. But The Netherlands abolish prison slave labour in 2021 so that is no longer possible.
- thangalin 1mo ago
  https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-role-dutch-criminal-justice-system-study-finds https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/20/ethnicity-definitely-plays-rol... "People from minority groups are relatively more often suspected of crimes that are more likely to end in a prison sentence. There is also a higher average number of charges against people from minority groups. On the socio-economic scale, people with an immigration background are more likely to be in vulnerable positions with lower education levels. "The origin of a suspect influences the outcomes of the criminal proceedings against them. 'This may indicate conscious or unconscious discrimination, which goes against the principle of the rule of law, in which everyone has an equal chance of fair treatment,' the researchers said."
  - test6554 1mo ago
    It seems like someone with an immigration background should have to go through an on-boarding period where a new arrival takes part in community service and is immersed with civic-minded people and good citizens rather than just heading straight for the slums to fend for themselves and live among the sorts of people who will be a bad influence on them.
    - kelseyfrog 1mo ago

amelius 1mo ago

Reminded me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1Af96gYVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1Af96gYVI "The insane plan to dam the North Sea."

arjie 1mo ago

I think, crucially, we cannot do so without damaging the environment even without fossil fuels. In time, presumably environmental concerns will result in sufficient acceleration of depolderization until the Netherlands no longer has such a large environmental damage footprint. Fortunately, they have made strides on this[0] but in time they will hopefully mitigate the terrible damage they have done here. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

fragmede 1mo ago

I wanna plug Fervo energy, as advanced geothermal, where they've got a plant in the US where it's up and running. They tunnel into the Earth and use that to heat up water, and use that temperature differential to generate electricity. Expertise in drilling oil wells can be translated into drilling geothermal pipes instead!

lstodd 1mo ago
How many wells (and how deep) and on what area one needs for a 1 (one) GWe sustained over 100 years? Timespan is critical too you know, you are cooling the rock below, so heat flow must be kept constant over the life of the plant. Any numbers for that?

jillesvangurp 1mo ago

The honest answer is that this is one of the edge cases that will probably electrified late. There are of course a lot of other use cases where electrification is a lot easier and more doable (e.g. tug boats are already being electrified). There are probably a few practical ways it could be done economically. One simple way that comes to mind is to use battery ships that connect to the main ship via cables. Those could move back and forth between charging spots and act as a mobile power supply. The question then becomes how much battery can be fitted on these ships and the practicalities of connecting ships with cables. 1mwh is about ~4 tonnes at current energy densities. Small barges commonly carry hundreds of tonnes of freight. Another obvious one is using small nuclear reactors. Not a popular solution with environmentalists but doable technically. Bio fuels are an alternative to fossil fuels. In the same way hydrogen or derived fuels are a valid alternative. More expensive than fossil fuels, but it would work. And if you apply system thinking here, a valid question is whether using more but smaller ships could work. People are getting hung up on electrifying the same huge ship. The only reason that huge ship is economical is the economies of scale you get with large engines and relatively expensive fossil fuels. As the article notes, dredging is something that used to be done manually and assisted by wind power. So, it can be done. It's just a lot more labor intensive that way. But we have ways to make these more autonomous now. So, an army of smaller battery operated dredge robots might replace a big dredging ship. They'd be moving back and forth between charge points and where the action is. It all boils down to cost, economics, and practicalities.

tim333 1mo ago

>those ships would require enormous chemical batteries, which is not practical or sustainable Since 2018 when the article was written the cost of batteries has dropped about 50% https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline. And will probably do another 50%+ with sodium ion batteries that use common and abundant materials. A human working at a normal kind of rate probably does about 2 kWh worth of work in a day or similar to a $200 battery which can be recharged for <$1. Batteries would be way cheaper than human labour already and similar to the cost of diesel.