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Almost everything you consume, from your weekly supermarket trip to the presents you order online, arrives by cargo ship. Shipping is the engine of the world economy, transporting eleven billion tonnes of goods each year. Despite the clear environmental crisis, shipping emissions have doubled since 1990 to more than one billion tonnes of CO2 – more than aviation, more than all of Germany, or even France, Britain, and Italy combined. As the shipping industry is forecast to grow threefold by 2050, full decarbonisation is urgent to limit catastrophic climate change. To understand whether there are any realistic alternatives to the polluting status quo of the container shipping industry, in 2020, Christiaan De Beukelaer spent 150 days as part of a sailing crew aboard the Avontuur, a century-old two-masted schooner fitted for cargo. This book recounts both this personal odyssey and the journey the shipping industry is embarking on to cut its carbon emissions. It shows that the Avontuur’s mission remains as crucial as ever: the shipping industry needs to cut its use of fossil fuels as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will face excessive global warming and the dire outcomes that will bring. The book explores our path to an uncertain future. It argues that shipping symbolises the kind of economy we’ve built: a gargantuan global machine that delivers the goods at an enormous environmental cost. Merely eliminating carbon emissions or improving efficiency won’t solve the underlying issue. If we can’t make shipping truly sustainable, we can’t solve the climate crisis.
under construction in France, Veer Voyage’s Dyna-rigged ship, and the Oceanbird project by Wallenius Wilhelmsen and the Neoline are most advanced in their development. These newer ‘primary wind propulsion’ initiatives mostly aim to operate far more within the existing shipping industry, rather than create a parallel market, by providing a tiny niche driven by shipping tiny amounts of luxury goods by sail. 10 Except the Canopée and TOWT’s ships, which should be in the water by the time this book hits the shelves
of fuel move and so we completely avoid bunker adjustment factors and we can take multi-year engagements without any terms of valuation on this aspect. And that’s one of our selling points; to be able to give this kind of insurance. 20 This does not mean that wind propulsion is without its problems, as Gavin Allwright, the Secretary-General of the International Windship Association told me when we first met in London. ‘One problem with wind propulsion is you can’t commodify it. So, you sell a
is needed per tonne-mile, the slower the transition will be. Where does this leave wind propulsion? As the shipping industry turned to fossil fuels, transport remained largely concentrated along trade winds routes. As a result, there remains ‘a good alignment between the windier sea areas and the areas where there is significant shipping activity.’ 41 When Jorne, Andreas, and Arjen founded Fairtransport to set sail aboard the Tres Hombres in 2007, no one took wind propulsion seriously. More than a decade
, inspired by the past. The wind propulsion we see today isn’t the same as the wind propulsion of yesteryear. Nor should it be. Wind propulsion follows the same basic principles, as the laws of physics have not changed, but both technology and the global economy have changed beyond recognition. The challenge today is finding ways to incorporate a century of advances in materials, science, and yacht racing technology into a shipping industry that has focused on the optimisation of vessels propelled by burning fossil fuels
. It also charts the journey the shipping industry must make to cut its carbon emissions. Will the industry make the urgently needed shift away from horrendously polluting, but frighteningly convenient, fossil fuels to emission-free propulsion through a mix of wind propulsion and ‘zero-emission’ e-fuels? And in doing so, will this meaningfully help mitigate the climate crisis that is rapidly unfolding? I hope so, but I’m not sure it will. Decarbonising the propulsion of ships is enormously important and urgent, but
fund an energy transition for vulnerable countries. 22 Third, adopt wind propulsion technologies to the greatest extent and scale possible. This would include retrofitting the existing fleet with the technologies that can help marginal gains across the board. Whether it’s a Flettner rotor, a rigid sail, or a kite, anything that helps us bring down emissions immediately will help slow down our inevitable exhaustion of the rapidly shrinking carbon budget. Given the urgency to take climate action, especially in shipping
the sixth assessment cycle. This report focuses on mitigation, or what we can do to limit the damage. The report suggests that technological options do exist to halve warming by 2030 and cut emissions further by 2050. For shipping, these technologies include e-fuels made from green electricity and innovations such as air lubrication of hulls, more efficient propellers, and of course a variety of wind propulsion technologies. It further acknowledges that ‘efficiency improvements [in the shipping industry] can provide some
dangerously critical tipping points. Before setting sail, Cornelius told me that he found ocean currents increasingly unreliable. The trade winds on which sailing ships have relied since they ventured out to sea may be changing because the oceans are changing. Some fear that age-old water currents in the Atlantic Ocean have already undergone shifts that may indicate they’re reaching or exceeding climactic tipping points. 18 The implications of changing wind and water patterns for wind propulsion remain unclear. ‘The amount