Are Sailboats the Future of Shipping? The New, Old Tech Making Waves.
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Hey, future everything listeners, we've got a quick question for you before getting into today's episode, which is all about shipping. Would you be willing to wait longer for a delivery if IT meant the boat transporting IT emitted less carbon dioxide? Why or why not? Let us know.

Our email is F O E podcast at W S J dot com. Thanks for listening. Now onto the show. This past summer, a cargo ship called the pixel ocean set sale from shanghai, china.

Its voyage was long, but pretty straight forward, travel to singapore to load up on fuel and food, cross the pacific ocean and travel around the southern tip of south america, load up on grain in brazil, and finally sail northeast across the atlantic ocean to poland. Oh, did I say that sale? I meant IT because the pixel ocean is partly powered by wind. IT actually has sales, but they're not like any you've ever seen. They're called wind wings.

Think of our wing on these big boats is like an aircraft wing vertically.

That's john Cooper, the CEO of B. A. R technologies. His company designed the wild wings, one hundred and twenty three foot tall structures made of steel and fiber reinforced plastic panels that pivot just like the flaps on a plane. I asked him how he describe them to his grandma.

grandmother. Imagine ten stories up on that building opposite you.

He took me literally.

So it's a really big piece of kit, and we're going to put that on a boat. And guess what? We're going back to not quite your day, grandmother, but you're not that old, but we're actually going back to the .

same ages because even though shipping mostly left wind power behind more than a century ago, sales are starting to make a feedback from the wall street journal. This is the future of everything i'm danny Lewis. Retrofit in cargo ships with sales might do more than make maritime shipping Greener.

They might also make a cheaper, which could change how the extremely complex shipping industry works. We're casting off now. Come aboard right after this break.

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I'll be honest, when I first heard about cargo ships with sales, I had a really hard time imagining them. In my mind, sailboats are small swifts racing vessels or clipper ships, with rigging in canvas sales, flapping in the breeze, maybe even a canner two.

If I say a windship, you think jack sparrow and pirates of the carabi an and know all of that, you don't think of A A huge or Carry of one of the the largest mining giants in the world. Le Gavin.

all right, is the founder and secretary general of the international windship association, which advocate tes for the small but growing cargo sAiling industry. But before he started pushing for a return to sales, he worked with Fishermen and other people who owned small ships .

in the developing world. I would see a poverty ed Fisherman unable to go out and get a catch because they couldn't afford the field to put in their vessel, whereas on the horizon you'd see a rich western yacht gliding by using free energy. And I just just didn't make any sense to me.

That's why he started advocating to bring sales back to shipping or as contemporary ship rights call, IT wind assisted proportion winter.

This vessel is a motor vessel with wind on IT to help the motors. So it's not Operator. As a wind ship Operated as a motor ship with wind help.

cargo vessels began shifting away from wind power in the late nineteenth century with the rise of steam, coal and oil powered ships. And it's been at least seventy years since the last major commercial cargo vesc's relied on sales. That's how we got from ships that looked something like jack sparrows, black Pearl, to the giant stubby bull Carriers that dominate today's ports. But while cargo ships may not be as romantic as schools, ers and clipper ships, they are critical to modern trade.

Hitting deadlines is one of the most of important criteria. The ship get traded as .

that's wall street journal senior reporter cos paris. He covers the global shipping industry and he says the fuel that makes those deadlines possible is also really bad for the environment.

Shifts are still powered by oil. Dirty oil, which is the worst pollution .

what cost us calls dirty or heavy oil, is a refiner byproduct. It's full of sofa and IT gives off fumes. S and particles that scientists say are bad for human health contribute to climate change.

The entire ship induction contribute about three percent of global seo to emissions.

That's about as much as the global aviation industry. Now, regulators from the U. S. International maritime organization and the european union are trying to crack down. Their goal is to get the shipping industry to become carbon neutral by twenty fifty, primarily through alternative fuels like mEthanol, ammonia and even hydrogen m.

The european union for resistance is going to include shipping in its carbon emission to taxi system. In five years time, the taxi will be as high as the Price of using alternative fuels, so he will not pay for ship owners to use heavy oil and pay all the extra fees. The cup with IT costa says .

alternative fuels can be really expensive. Some are at least double the Price of bunker fuel, which is one reason that big companies like food and agriculture giant cargill are investing in developing and prototyping wind desist technology.

We actually started the experimenting with wind modern ten years ago. We we tried with kids, and he was an interesting exercise, which the end of the day did work for a host of reasons.

Young delmon is the president of cardio ocean transportation company's martime shipping wing.

We've decided to look at wind again because IT makes a lot of sense, right? It's it's a free fuel in the end of the day. We also felt that because we did IT before and I didn't work, that should not be a reason to not try again.

While bunker fuel is relatively cheap, IT accounts for more than a third of ships Operate and costs a metric ton of ec, costs between five hundred and one thousand dollars on average.

According to the marine fuel focus publication, ship and bunker, a medium sized campo max boat Carrier, the same model as the pixi ocean can Carry up to five hundred and thirty thousand gallons of heavy fuel and consumes more than eleven thousand gallons a day, even on the cheapest hand of the scale that at least twelve thousand dollars a day ent on fuel alone. And that's with the dirty stuff. But dealin's sales might save shipping companies a lot of fuel.

The expectation with two sales that we have, IT should save around twenty percent. If you put a third one and and you opto vise a bit more, you you should be able to get to thirty percent.

And if you're looking at those replacement fuels, dillman says the savings are even Better, especially since cargill has about seven hundred ships and its fleet.

If we can save a couple of tons of fuels, that is a payback. That makes economic sense. And and that is the beauty, I think, of, of wind, because IT doesn't only save carbon, but IT also saves fuel.

But while the classic clipper ships and schools ers were designed for sales modern cargo ships like the pixel ocean warrant, and that makes installing high tech sales tRicky.

So when you're designing a wing for a race boat, the the drag of the hall of that race boat is very small.

John Cooper, again from B A R technologies, which designed the sales on the pixel ocean. Before this project, members of the team worked on top of the line, extremely era dynamic cell boats racing in the america's cup. That's one of the premiere sAiling competitions. It's kind of like going from designing a formula a one race to building a big rig truck.

The chAllenges are very big, very different one, because the drag of that heart is colossal in comparison to the air ethne amic drag of the wing.

Remember how we compared these new sales to airplane wings earlier? Cooper says the window wings work the same way.

What is doing is creating the most pressure differential between the top of the wing and the bottom, the wing, and therefore the most upward lift. And then when you insert the whole wing vertically, like our wing solution, then you're pushing the vessel forward.

And then the wind d wings have to be installed on a vessel that again, wasn't designed for IT. There are things on deck, like hatches into the cargo hold that have to be accessible by the crew. So B, A, R technologies designed big metal plates to mount the sales on that sit about nine feet above the deck. And then the sales also fooled down horriston tally for when the ship goes into port or encounters the storm.

IT falls down into A V, H. Catch point on the desk for for loading and it's a really interesting site.

Then there's the question of how you pilot the ship with these wings because modern cargo ships are more like airplanes are big rigs than classic sAiling ships and require very different work from the cruel, Cooper says. A lot of the fine details of Operating the wind wings are handled by computers.

It's a automatic that we have as A A good array sensors, both on the wing and off the wing, which are detecting the wind speed in the wind direction, and it's putting the wings lies into the right position to give the right amount of trust and changing the shape of the wing accordingly. If the wind changes or the wind speed changes.

and if a sudden storm hits too fast for the crew to lower the wings, Cooper says, they are automatically power down and just spin about, it's like letting out the ropes that pulled traditional sales taught flap around instead of catching the wind guys.

I say, flat around.

But that's the reality. The pixelation was the first ship that B, A, R technologies is retrofitted with wind wings. But it's not alone.

In october, another ship called the burger olympus launched with four of b rs wind wings. It's a new castle max class vessel which has more than twice the cargo capacity of the pixel. And coop er says more companies are asking about getting their own wind wings.

I've sixty three owners that we're currently talking to and they are all waiting for the result to the pix station. But IT is about influencing all the stake oders.

which could be an even bigger chAllenge than designing the high tech sales because the technology is also running into the complex web of companies and contracts that make up the maritime time shipping industry that's coming up next after the break.

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The miracle of modern shipping is the fact that so many millions of tones of goods can travel thousands of miles, and for the most part, get there on time. But when IT goes wrong, one delay can script global supply chains. Like in twenty twenty one, when traffic through egypt suz canal came to a standstill after a ship called the ever given underground. The ship, as long as the empire state building still has to be pulled straight before I can finally move up, can this about three billion dollars worth of goods that Normally would traverse this can out every single day.

It's one of the main arteries for ships Carrying goods around the globe was completely blocked by the ship. Basically, alison had a heart attack over this last week.

The canal was blocked for six days. A salvage crews worked to get the quarter mile long ever given unstuck. A lot of shipments were delayed, but tight delivery schedules meant some cargo ships couldn't wait and instead had to take other routes like going the long way around africa.

Now that's a lot further, and you're gna burn a lot of field .

but the winds during .

international there, they wouldn't have even waited. Um they may not even go through the suez canal because they have got a free energy source that's pretty strong around that area.

Sounds great, right? Especially if, as we mentioned before, sales could save up to twenty to thirty percent of the fuel. But here's where the shipping industry itself starts making things complicated because most of the time the company that owns the ship is different from the company using IT W S J. Reporter costs paris, as the ship's owners would have to decide whether they want to install and pay for retrofit sales, while the charter words who typically cover fuel costs .

would be the ones saving money orders with substantive data that you get proven savings. If that picks up speed, the order will have no choice, but is still sales the types of .

ships and cargo they Carry also means not all of them can be retrofitted with sales. Bulk ships and tankers can use wind power because most of their cargo is stored below decks, but it's tRicky for container ships.

The containers can go to ten, fifty floors high, right? So you cannot have the sales because they are the big users, they are the biggest fleets. Add sales will not work for them because of of the structure of the ships.

Some companies are trying to figure out how to build future container ships with enough space for sales among the stacks, but those are still in the works and years away from taking to the seas. Both Young deal men from cargill and john Cooper from B, A, R. Technologies declined to say how much a cost to develop and install the wind wings on the pixel oia, but the cost benefit conversation is top of mind for a lot of companies working in wind propulsion.

IT was really interesting because once we brought a ship owner to the table that really unearthed, really revealed their anxieties about the technology.

Dian gillin is the founder and CEO of smart Green shipping, another company building high tech sales for cargo ships.

It's their property and we're kind of rocking up and going, hey, let's you know let's stick these things on IT and well, they're like woo wang on them in IT. You need to feel that this is technology that's proven unworkable.

elpin says her company's prototype sale system is being installed on a small bulk Carrier named the pacific group after a kind of water bird. SHE says safety and working ability is critical for Operating this ship since its main job is holding nuclear waste.

a nuclear waste Carrier needs to be the safest in the world, so we successfully installed this ship. Then I think we give the industry in an awful lot of confidence that a regular bulk Carrier moving grain or something will be safe with our technology deployed on IT.

One solution gillin is expLoring to cut down the Price is the least out the sales instead of selling them out.

right? So doesn't need a lot of big stuff to be sunk into the body of the ship. So we're not taking any car go space out of the ship. And as we can install IT pretty quickly and critically, do you install IT pretty quickly.

that could address concerns about the capital costs of installing sales on cargo ships. But if sales do take off again, they could be the start of a shift in an industry that Gavin, all right, the windship advocate, says, is built around rushing to wait.

We ve rush across the ocean, and then we might sit there for two weeks because there's no birth to unload. So we burned a huge amount of energy to then just wait there. So why not slow down?

Even if wind power is just supplementing the engines? IT would make the direct routes the shipping industry has used for decades less profitable. Instead, ships might have to do more of what they used to do, follow the breeze.

We've always had natural wind corridors, and we know them. We know where they go. And they are very, very predictable. Have A A more flexible wave arriving. Yes, little cost, a little more to pay the crew, but the crew costs quite small these days in comparison with the fuel cost. So it's rethinking some of the logistics, alright.

says he might start with bull goods fitters like the pixi ocean and the virtual lamps, which already have some more flexibility in the supply chain than container ships Carrying consumer goods like electronics and cars. Between the new regulations on carbon emissions, expensive alternative fuels in demand for zero emission fleet, there's a growing need for a new way to get ships from port to port. And that could mean in a decade or two, commercial ports might once again be filled with masts and sales.

Climate change doesn't wait for people. This is coming down the the train track and it's coming fast. So there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of volatility. And wind is the only thing, the only propulsive energy force that is actually predictable. In that sense.

The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. Stephanie organ fruits is the editorial director of the future of everything. The episode was produced by me.

Luis, our fact checker is a partners, Nathan Michael level and just defending our our sound designers and road our theme music. Kathy mills up is our supervising producer. I shall all muslims as our development producer scot salary and critically are the deputy editors.

Phila patterson is the head of news audio for the wall street journal. Like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening.

Amazon q business is the new generative A I assistant from A W S, because many tasks can make business slow, as if waiting through mud help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon q can security understand your business data and use that knowledge to stream task? Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time.

Q got this. Learn what amazon q business can do for you at A W S dot com. Slash, learn more.