China has launched the first fully electric zero-emission cargo ship in the world!
If you’ve been following the development of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power in the last year, you’ll know that China is the number one country on this development. They are working really hard to make as much as possible of their energy renewable, and today I want to share the news that they have actually launched a zero-emission cargo ship! This is not a plan that will happen in the future; the ship has already been put in the water!
Why does it matter that the cargo ship has zero emission?
Most of us don’t really see how many cargo ships there are around, but the International Maritime Organization estimated that 796,000,000 CO2 was released by the shipping industry in 2012, and they think they numbers will keep on rising unless something is done. This number can be translated to be roughly 2.2 % of all the human-made emission in the entire world, so this industry obviously has a big impact on the climate change! The source is found on page 4 of Third IMO GHG Study 2014. This is the entire report by the International Maritime Organization, and might be an interesting read for those who are interested in this topic. It talks about some of the problems and possible solutions the shipping industry currently faces, and the emissions is a big part of it.
It’s obvious to see that we should work on improving the shipping industry when we look at these numbers, and cargo vessels that run on pure electricity compared to fossil fuels is a very good start.
The first electric cargo ship in the world!
China Daily just announced that the fully electric cargo ship has been deployed in Guangzhou, China. The ship is 2,000 metric tons heavy, and can run for 80 kilometers before it needs to be recharged. It takes about 2 hours to fully charge the battery, but a regular stop to drop off supplies will take about the same time, so it will usually be able to fully charge while it’s waiting for other stuff anyway.
Like the electric cars, the shipping cargo runs on electricity that is stored in a lithium battery. It can store up to 2,400 kilowatt hours, roughly the same as 40 new electric cars.
An image of the new electric cargo ship just before it has been launched into the river.
Is this the future?
We can hope that fully electric cargo chips are the future, but there are still big hurdles to overcome before this can be a common thing. Firstly being able to travel for 80 kilometers before having to recharge is not a lot. This only makes them suitable for short distance shipping, but it is certainly a good option when you need to ship your stuff less than 80 kilometers.
Another problem is that electric vehicles not necessarily means that they release zero-emission. This really depends on the origin of the electricity. Many places still uses electricity from burning fossil fuels, and by doing this you almost gets as much emission as you do from burning the same fossil fuels directly in the ship. It’s a bit better, but for it to be zero-emission you will need to provide the ship with renewable energy in the first place.
Thanks for reading
If you want to learn more about this new ship, then follow the links above. Thanks for reading the post, and feel free to leave a comment below if you got anything you want to share with the rest of us!
Interesting to see these technologies develop - thanks for sharing. Kate
Yeah, we are living in a very exciting time when it comes to sustainable technologies! Thanks for the comment, @kate-m!
What is your favourite sustainable technology? Some of mine are the very simple cheap ones that can revolutionise lives in developing countries, like solar cookers, solar thermal water heaters (i.e. black tubing), solar air heating (drink cans painted black), plastic bottle interior lights , rocket stoves and so on. Even though electric cars and so on are very cool obviously :)
Small and functional sustainable solutions like the ones you are talking about are really nice! However, they alone won't really make a big difference in terms of combating climate change. I do think governments and NGOs need to find solutions to reduce emissions, and stuff such as solar and wind energy will most likely be a huge part of this.
I'm really looking forward to when solar panels can become cheaper, and produce less emissions during creation. Once we're all using renewable energy, we can start to focus on the smaller problems that we also need to solve in order to become more sustainable.
Thanks for your insights, Kate! :)
I guess I like the small artisanal solutions because they are accessible and therefore directly relevant to my life. Like I could actually have the skills and the funds to make that happen. And because it's so amazing that really poor people can access a lot of them and make immediate impacts on their standards of living. And I guess, umm, how to put it, it's like "developing" countries aren't destined to follow in the footsteps of more industrialised nations, they can choose to do things differently, and distributed sustainable technologies could definitely contribute to something different! I mean it would just be a blooming disaster if they followed the same pattern as indutrialised countries. Big industrial solutions, whilst really cool and interesting and obviously important for climate change, just seem a wee bit abstract to my own personal sphere of reality. Like the electricity that comes into my house, it's hard to even know where that comes from, was it coal/air turbine/hydro/nuclear??? Who knows, it's just a soup reduced to pie-chart reports every now and again. The big industrial developments in sustainables do make pleasing good news stories though!
Yes, I've been keeping an eye on solar panels too! It does seem that we are coming closer to having much more distributed energy systems which would be awesome!
That's a good point! I tend to think of these challenges and problems on a large scale, so I often forget about the small things each and every one of us can do to stop/reduce the climate change!
I guess electricity source really depends on the political regime of the country or state you live in. I feel lucky to live in Norway where most of our energy comes from hydroelectric sources. This is not very harmful for the climate if done correctly. Ironically we pump up oil here to sell to other countries who do not produce their own sustainable energy.. Really stupid, but a lot of the people here love the money it brings.
Anyway, I also hope the developing countries follow their own pattern instead of following the destructive example the current industrial countries have set.
Oh waow, beautiful Norway. Is it a great place to live?
Oh yeah, it's very lovely here. We of course have some issues, but all countries do. However, it's a perfect place to live if you enjoy nature :)
Oh😅 its very interesting information 👍🏼 I've never saw such ships. I think our life becomes more and more easy every day.
Yeah, they seem to become that way.
Thank you for your comment! :D
woahhhhhhh so awesmm...when it comes to progress sure thr is no competition fr china
Yeah, they have been doing very good for the sustainability progress lately. I just hope they are able to inspire the rest of the world! Thanks for the comment, @mvrr007 :)
It's a great start! It might not be able to travel far, but the important thing is that they're actively coming up with solutions. Great news!
Yeah, exactly! We need to start all technological improvements somewhere, so this is a great start :)
Thanks for commenting, @leandr!
I think we often tend to try and ease our environmental conscience with the electric vehicle trend, I'm glad you actually address the issue of the electrical source! If we don't create our electricity through sustainable means, what will it matter if all of our cars are electric?
Exactly! If we use fossil fuels to generate electricity for electric cars, then the gain is pretty much zero. However, cargo ships often use crude oil when they are out at sea, so they would actually have a lower emission by using electricity from fossil fuel sources, but it is still very far from optimal.
Yeah, I did some research and I found out that electricity powered cars are in some cases 2 times more efficient than gas powered equivalents. This is largely because of the extremely high cost of refining petroleum in terms of energy. So the development of better and more efficient electrically powered vehicles it's something that we should celebrate! Reducing our Global energy consumption is the logical first step in our eventual quest to eliminate the use of fossil fuels entirely.
Wow, I didn't realize that it was that much better! That's good news.
I'm excite to see how good the electric vehicles will be in 10-20 years time. Hopefully they will be common, and most of their electricity will come from renewable sources.
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STOPWow, I missed this information. 80kms is not a lot, but it was the same for electric cars at the begening. Hope the technology will improve quickly. However we still have the problem from the electricity production.