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The Return of Sail Power: Cargo Ships Are Turning Back to the Wind
- fsckboy 17d agoGrowing up as I did in an old seafaring town, quite near Ahab's ports of call, I love the romance of the sea and I listen exclusively to sea chanties. For low-value and bulk cargo, ships make sense, and modern computer-controlled sail trim and wind energy harvesting probably makes a great case. But high value cargo is largely today shipped by air. Nvidia wants money for its chips ASAP, too valuable to sit around non productively while being steamered. Maybe with surplus wind energy they could mine bitcoin while en route? A sort of related topic, about 20 years ago during peak farm-to-table "buy local" fashion, the NY Times pointed out that lamb shipped from New Zealand (where is that on a map, I can't find it?) to New York City arrives with a lower carbon footprint than lamb delivered by trucks from nearby upstate NY farms, such are the economies of scale in shipping. But now, blow me down me hearties, I look forward to dining on New Zealand lamb carried to my door by the winds of fortune!
- upboundspiral 17d agoIf there was a direct and maintained electric train route + stronger food regulation in the US you could dine on fresh local produce with a lower carbon footprint. International cooperation and trade is great, but in the US specifically the economic behemoths have used globalization to paper over the real problems that we face at home (we haven't truly invested in infrastructure in a long time, the meat we produce is rejected on health standards abroad, etc). I doubt the smokescreen will last much longer with Trump et al blowing up international agreements.
- fsckboy 17d agoNYers dine on fresh local produce without subsidies or government interference. Farm fresh vegetable produce is perishable and goes from fresh to wilted/rotten very quickly. It is in the capitalist interest with no regulation to move fresh produce as quickly as possible to the supermarkets and onto the shelves. Every day trucks bring fresh produce from NJ and LI and upstate NY into the city and it immediately goes onto the shelves for sale. No communist system could do it as well. Produce is an extremely profitable segment of supermarket sales. The markups are very low (no communist could compete) but the turnover is very quick. While a can of beans might sit there a few weeks, customers love fresh produce. So hypothetically, they could make a 0.5% markup (you going to take public transit to NJ to buy produce a half a point cheaper?), but that's every week, so in a year it's a healthy 25% markup for the supermarket's annual investment. I made up the numbers to explain the concept, but that in a nutshell is supermarket economics. Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%. Tiny margin, healthy profit, point made. Very efficient, happy customers, happy supermarkets. Trucks bring produce farm to table, maybe a distribution stop. Trains are for bulk stuff and not route flexible, so it's not clear they contribute any advantage to the mix, but I love me trains too. And it's not just NYer's, that's just an urban extreme example, every supermarket chain the the country operates like this.
- happyopossum 16d ago> Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%. That's not how profit works. If you spend $100 to make $102, that's a 2% margin. If you do that every week, you've spent $5200 to make $5304: still a 2% margin. You don't get to count only the margin every week, you have to count the outlay every week too...
- derektank 17d ago>If there was a direct and maintained electric train route What do you mean by this? Most US freight trains are already diesel electric. German freight uses overhead electric wires on most of the shared passenger rail network, which is great, but doesn’t make it any easier or faster to deliver freight to consumers. Are you thinking of high speed rail? Bullet and maglev trains aren’t used to deliver freight anywhere globally that I’m aware of.
- Gud 17d agoDiesel... electric. Now remove the word diesel. It reduces the carbon footprint considerably if you don't have to fill up your trains with carbon.
- derektank 16d agoPerhaps I misread the parent comment, but the emphasis on that clause seemed to be on the fresh produce, not the lower carbon emissions. I don’t know how swapping out for 100% electric improves people’s access to fresh produce is my point
- Gud 16d agoDiesel electric are not at all the same as an electric train network. Electric trains have a very interesting property, as they work as a grid as both producers, feeding back when they are breaking. You made a second point, that most trains are already "diesel electric", I am pointing out, that the function is very different from an electric train, and much less friendly(and less efficient) to the environment.
- yreg 17d agoNo, you don't need maglev to compete with a ship sailing from NZ on speed.
- pbmonster 17d agoBut you would need maglev if you wanted to compete on energy per ton of cargo per mile. Ships are several times more efficient than classic trains.
- bell-cot 17d agoI'd first question whether the NY Times' accounting included the carbon footprint within NZ, where the lambs are probably raised far from the shipping piers. Then you've got the infrastructure and power requirements for freezing for the long ocean voyage. Then... After that, I'd question local sheep farmers about how suitable upstate NY is for raising lambs, compared to NZ. And about the regulatory and business environment they face. Agriculture in the US is a hellish mess, and the great majority of its problems are caused by neither its associated carbon emissions nor by underinvesting in transportation infrastructure.
- internet_points 17d agoOoh what's your favourite sea shanty, or chanty gang?
- bombcar 17d agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BgpBZB3Apno https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BgpBZB3Apno seems appropriate somehow
- foobarian 16d agoI'm not sure when the lamb chops started showing up in local supermarkets but it feels like it's recent. I dress them in olive oil + kosher salt + crushed garlic + chopped thyme and oregano, and then grill over lump charcoal.
- 3eb7988a1663 17d agoIf anyone else was confused why those pictures were of giant tubes and not canvas sails, you are not alone. Apparently those are some version of "Suction Sails". The vendor's website has a graphic that explains it, though it was fighting my ability to scroll. https://bound4blue.com/esail/ https://bound4blue.com/esail/
- dylan604 17d agoThe rending of the Maersk ship really strains the concept. If the containers are stacked that high, would it not block the wind going to the solitary sail?
- maxerickson 17d agoThe force is perpendicular to the sail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor
- scamdrill 17d agoSame principal that causes a soccer ball to bend. The magnus effect.
- jimnotgym 17d agoThat is not how I read the article you linked. It says the force is perpendicular to the long axis AND airflow. And later it says the force is perpendicular to the wind. So I am reasoning with a side wind 'on the beam' you get a force pusing forward. Which incidentally is a traditional rigs best point of sail. This doesn't appear to be the full story, since the boat in the photograph is healed over in the same way as the gaff rigged sailboat next to it, so there appears to be some sideways force too. Laterall resistance of the hull in the water will force that into a resultant force that is mostly forwards (but with some leeway) I presume. I am supossing that when running before the wind this means the force is to one or other sides of the ships axis (depending on the rotation). The resistance of the hull to lateral motion forces this again into forward motion. But the sail is indeed being obstructed by the containers and I believe the force will therefore be diminished as per the OP, since the wind has led sail area to act on. I am inferring all this since the wiki is light on detail. I would be concerned that one cannot reef this kind of sail. In a storm it is going to heel the boat more, change its motion through the waves, perhaps press the bow down. Bearing in mind that on a traditional square rigger, one would lower the top part of the mast before a storm to reduce windage. I feel a better reference would be an aid... but I'm with the op, at some points of sail the containers are in the way
- WalterBright 17d agoThis seems to happen once every 20 years.
- sien 17d agoYep. They alternate decades with the 'Airships are returning for cargo' groups.
- walrus01 17d agoTo date, they've achieved a very high level of advancement in making a new airship that looks like a butt. Sir Mixalot would be proud. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=airship+that+looks+like+a+butt https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=airship+t...
- iAMkenough 17d agoSoon we’ll need to provide proof-of-age just to look up at the sky.
- Cthulhu_ 17d agoI feel like I've seen that same thing for 20, 30 years now, lol
- mrguyorama 16d agoYou have. That airship's maiden voyage was in 2012. The US DoD has pretty much never stopped throwing a few dollars at airship projects. They want them as long term air reconnaissance assets, but now satellites are competitive for that. Former Loring Air Force base in Limestone Maine has been the home of airship projects of various kinds since the 2000s. I got to see a few.
- lukeify 17d agoI'd be down for a future of awesome looking ships and giant zeppelins gracing the sky.
- walrus01 17d agoThe most recent example, it's somewhat down the page at the gcaptain URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliner_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliner_Origin
- lastofthemojito 17d agoYou can also sail on the Neoliner Origin as a passenger if you want to get a closer look: https://www.sailcoop.fr/en/our-crossings/north-america/ https://www.sailcoop.fr/en/our-crossings/north-america/
- walrus01 16d agoI know that freighter cruises or nontraditional ways of crossing an ocean by ship get costly quick, but looking at the prices, it adds up... You need to obtain and give them a medical clearance certificate issued in the last 30 days, you need to buy their special travel insurance, and there's a 110 Euro cost (at each end of the trip?) to take their designated taxi service to/from the ship, because regular vehicles or transportation can't approach the secured areas of the ports. It's definitely something I would still do if I had tons of extra money laying around and wanted to cross the Atlantic in a very novel way.
- tialaramex 16d agoHuh. I live in a major UK port city and while of course the actual docks are a restricted area I don't think anybody would stop me just walking in. Indeed one of the city buses goes there - it does say that you need a reason to still be on the bus when it enters that restricted area but obviously nobody checked any of the times I've been on that bus. I think some of the "ride sharing" people are intimidated by the scary legal notices, when we tried to leave again after looking around a possible floating venue for my friend's big party she tried to summon an Uber (or maybe Lyft? One of them) and it did not result in ever getting a ride, but we eventually just booked an ordinary 20th century style cab out of the zone (the docks are sprawling, so walking out would take ages). This whole thing about paying €110 for a special taxi seems crazy. Is this normal in France?
- tomkarho 17d agoCan we bring zeppelins back next for air?
- calmbonsai 17d agoNo, they’re really not. Turns out, sail-power scales sublinearly and, shocker, the wind isn’t a reliable source of power for the logistics demands of today’s supply chains. We’re never going back to wind, but we will be de-carbonizing shipping either with ammonia combustion, fuel cells, or both.
- nradov 17d agoLonger term I think we'll also use synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels manufactured through the Fischer–Tropsch process. People have proposed bringing back nuclear powered merchant ships but that's a non-starter for cost and security reasons. We can keep the nuclear plants safely on land and use them to make carbon-neutral fuel.
- mschuster91 17d agoThat is insanely inefficient however. It only makes sense for transoceanic air travel, probably supplanted by synthfuel from biomass, but in the long term we will see ships powered by batteries. Far far more efficient.
- nradov 17d agoBatteries are already being used for ferries but they're too large and heavy for transoceanic merchant ships. I doubt that operators will be willing to make more frequent port calls just to recharge.
- mschuster91 16d ago... at the moment. We might find ourselves with containers full of batteries being exchanged on sea by feeder ships. Doesn't help across the real oceans, but works along coastal routes (which Asia-Europe definitely is). The more expensive oil is, the faster the transition will have to be done. Simply because at some point, even the trash that freight ships burn will be more expensive than a bunch of battery containers and an electric drivetrain.
- draven 17d agoWhy is every paragraph in this article at most 2 sentences long, with most of them being a single sentence?
- fransje26 17d agoGotta adapt to the decreasing attention span economy.
- usrusr 17d agoSkysails tried, now they appear to have fully pivoted to land based power generation. My dream future would see the oceans swarming with kite driven robotic boats that just cruise around under kite power, harvesting electricity with hydrogenerators as they go, feeding that power into a hydrolyser slowly filling some hydrogen storage unit that they drop off for sale at a port when full.
- acidburnNSA 17d ago59 different companies including mine responded to MARAD's recent RFI on nuclear powered merchant ships. Many people are realizing that wind, hydrogen, ammonia, etc are falling short for global scale shipping. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/07/2026-09070/request-for-information-development-of-a-commercially-viable-system-centric-small-modular-reactor https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/07/2026-09...
- bgnn 16d agoTBH this makes the most sense. Nuclear for large scale shipping + battery electric or hydrogen for smaller distances, rivers etc.
- ok_dad 16d agoNuclear power is expensive enough on land. At sea it’ll never compete with any other energy source. They’ll be pulling hydrocarbons from the air before they do nuclear ships in earnest. Yes I have heard of nuclear carriers and subs, the only two useful applications of nuclear power at sea.
- rozab 16d agoRussia has been using nuclear icebreakers for civilian purposes since the 50s, and has also used nuclear propulsion for other vessel types, as has the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker
- ok_dad 15d agoThanks, I am pretty knowledgeable about nuclear ships and they’re only used in specific situations because they don’t care about cost for those situations. It’s too expensive for cargo and there is no training pipeline for civilian naval reactors so this idea is dead on arrival. I’m pro nuclear tech but the economics and systems will not support nuclear for ships right now. We are barely making headway into nuclear on land these days, let’s focus on that for now.
- ExoticPearTree 17d agoWe need to start fitting nuclear reactors on cargo ships. The technology is proven and reliable. Not to mention no emissions.
- lxgr 17d agoIf you think about this for a minute, maybe you'll be able to form a theory for why this is already very common for military vessels, but not so much for unarmed civilian ones...
- ExoticPearTree 17d agoIcebreakers are not military vessels and they have nuclear reactors. Probably initial cost is the reason this did not become something more common.
- lxgr 16d agoYes, but they're also not regular old merchant ships by any means. All existing ones see to be operated by a Russian government-owned corporation.
- sombragris 16d agoI guess this is not exactly "cost", but also lifetime spans. A nuclear reactor can sustain a ship for about 20+ years, and that lifetime is too long for many ships, who would be headed out to the scrap yard in less time than that.
- akazantsev 17d ago> We need to start fitting nuclear reactors on cargo ships. That's a great idea, and it's timely too. Right now, cargo ships are being attacked in many parts of the world.
- 21asdffdsa12 17d agoWouldn't it make more sense to store windpower at sea and transfer the resulting fuel to passing by ships?
- ralphhughes 17d agoI've also thought this. There are loads of offshore wind farms in the North Sea and I bet the cost per kWh at the offshore substation is a fraction of the cost compared to the same electricity once stepped up for transmission through the undersea cables to the shore, possibly curtailed due to grid congestion and then transmitted still further to the urban load centers. If only there was a reliable, mature process to turn air\seawater plus energy at the windfarm into a synthetic fuel (ammonia or methanol maybe?) that could be then stored and used to refuel green shipping that burned no bunker fuel or diesel?
- alexpotato 17d agoSat next to a fusion researcher once on a commuter train. This particular line struck me: "When oil prices go up, so does money for fusion research" Feels the same for sail and cargo ships.
- nomel 16d agoSails have an immediate operational cost reduction that should add up to a future net savings. Fusion research has no immediate benefit.
- culi 16d agoSo much of our economy is local maxima and path dependencies. Plastic is so cheap because it's basically a byproduct of the heavily subsidized oil industry. When we drill for oil we always also get ethane which companies would have to pay exorbitant amounts to get rid of in compliance with environmental standards. Turning it into plastic and other petro products is a great alternative In a world that didn't do this much oil drilling, plastic wouldn't always be the cheapest option. In fact virgin plastic is often taxed even lower than recycled plastic to encourage plastic usage
- erelong 16d agoPossibly related: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/05/how-to-design-a-sailing-ship-for-the-21st-century https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/05/how-to-design-a-sa...
- JoeAltmaier 16d agoA 5% reduction in fuel is significant, especially as cargo ships are responsible for a disproportionate share of petro-pollution. They burn the cheapest petro gunk, emitting tremendous volumes of soot and such.
- culi 16d agoIs this still true after the IMO 2020 sulfur regulations? I remember they found out that these ships were producing so much white aerosol clouds that it actually had a really significant albedo effect that reflected a lot of the sun's heat back out. When they were banned it actually temporarily accelerated warming by an estimated 0.05°C bump
- go_elmo 16d agoYes it is still true. Sulphur is one element only that got regulated - petrol on its own is a soup of different hydrocarbons - various chains & lenghts - every one has specific burn characteristics and optimal conditions to burn. Using this thick soup thats close to coal, the process of burning is always far from optimal for most of them. Thus black sud gets emitted - basically unburned carbon - a huge waste financially but also ecologically as its comparable to cigarette Fumes regarding unhealthy compounds. Plus fine particle dust. Chances its toxic for marine life are huge. Those are all externalized costs no one of the polluters pays for besides the collective life on this planet. How can this be fair?
- BurningFrog 16d agoThe argument is simply that killing marine life is less bad than killing humans.
- go_elmo 15d agoWhat? Heat kills both, sulphur pollution damages both. Its all connected, always..
- darksaints 16d agoAs both a sailor and a wingsail designer, I've followed this space for a long time. I've gotta say this is just one of the thousands of trial PR announcements for different companies which develop something and think it's gonna save the world. https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html We've been seeing these every other year or so ever since the walker wingsail back in the mid 80's: https://www.change-climate.com/Transport_Land_Sea_Sustainable/Assisted_Ships_Sails_Solar_Projects_Marine_Pollution/Walker_WingSails.htm https://www.change-climate.com/Transport_Land_Sea_Sustainabl... As to why they are never successful, I don't exactly know. Most of the companies that put these on trial just quietly retire them without adoption, and never explain why. It's not about ease of use, plenty of designs have near 100% automation and simple design. It's not really about maintenance, plenty of designs have almost maintenance-free design as well. My best guess is that sails/wingsails/rotorsails have inherent height, which interferes with bridges and gantry cranes, and requires furling/stowing capabilities which them makes the systems a lot more complex. My next best guess is that in order to get meaningful propulsion, you introduce heeling, which is bad for container ships and potentially catastrophic for dry bulk.
- pge 16d agoMy understanding was that it was not just the height but also the deck space and depth (the vertical sails have to extend down through the decks). Giving up that much cargo volume (in addition to issues at the dock you note) is not worth it.
- sandworm101 16d agoUnpredictability. The sails do reduce costs/fuel but they do so in a rather unpredictable manner. Cargo hauling is all about rigid scheduals and precalculated costs: contracts to deliver at an exact time and load an exact amount of fuel. Unpredictable elements, even if on average mostly good, do not mesh with that culture.
- darksaints 16d agoDelivery at an exact time is of course a constraint, but I’ve never seen any sort of constraint on the exact fuel usage. This isn’t anything like aviation where excess fuel has to be dumped in order to land safely. If you don’t use the fuel for your voyage, you just fill up less for your next voyage. Weight effects are countered via water ballast, as they always have been. And sails for power augmentation do not complicate timelines at all. If there’s not enough wind, you use more fuel. Nobody has meaningfully proposed relying 100% on wind propulsion.
- Dwedit 16d agoThis site is really hostile to people who do any kind of javascript blocking.
- ectoloph 16d agoStena claim that their Flettner rotors (spinny sails) reduce fuel use by 9%. https://stenaline.com/media/stories/introducing-stena-connecta/ https://stenaline.com/media/stories/introducing-stena-connec... They are in commercial service already on the Irish Sea.
- bamboozled 16d agoI feel that I read this same story every year ?