Buckley, C. (2023, October 3). In shipping, a push to slash emissions by harnessing the wind.

The New York Times. Retrieved January 18, 2024, from

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/climate/wind-powered-ships-climate.html?searchResultPosition=9

 

The shipping industry is trying to pull away from using fossil fuels and using the wind instead. The worldwide shipping industry contributes “about 3 percent of the greenhouse gasses” to the Earth’s atmosphere and about 90% are run on fuel. Cargill, a shipping company chartered a boat from China to Brazil. It used two wings that adjusted to fill with wind and folded down when not in use, and decreased fuel usage by 30%. The French company Airseas used a design of a kite, “It is housed in a storage tank on a ship’s bow and deployed by cable and crane to slice nearly 1,000 feet into the sky, where winds blow strong.” It could decrease fuel usage by 40%. A lot of nations are looking to not add additional carbon by 2050. It should be adopted fast, but it might be hard because the shipping industry is conservative. It would severely reduce it, according to the New York Times,“research has found that shipping emissions could be cut by up to 47 percent by 2030 through a combination of wind propulsion, new fuels and reduced speeds.”

 

The article is very powerful because it brings in a concept about possibly reducing CO2 emissions that we don’t usually think about, shipping. Shipping is a big part of our world and we get a lot of products through it, but it’s not something we are usually involved in. It also props up the economy. I think this article is really cool because shipping and the economy connect countries. If this was implemented it would have a larger scale impact globally. I also like how it is very efficient and can create a huge change on CO2 reductions, it’s not intense.