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The Return of Sail Power: Cargo Ships Are Turning Back to the Wind

193 points · 136 comments · gumby

  1. calmbonsai · · focus · HN ↗
    No, 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.

    1. CorvusCrypto · · focus · HN ↗
      Agree that it's not going to be a binary shift. The tech does look promising for at least rotor sails, but that's an improvement which also demands use of traditional powerplants to drive the rotors ofc. Still worth investigating imo considering the shipping industry is the area of the world that still contributes highest to carbon output and is sort of an "untouchable" industry due to criticality. If cheap enough this could help while we wait for e.g. "greener" fuel or other things to develop. But yeah, to underscore further, not like shipping will look like my sailing yacht any time soon.
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