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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, marine shipping is the single most fuel efficient way of moving anything anywhere. A large cargo ship can move a ton of cargo up to 1000 miles on a single gallon of fuel. [1]

Second is freight trains, at about 500 miles per gallon per ton. [2]

[edit] #3 is freight trucks at about 134 miles per gallon per ton [3] and pulling up the rear is air transport at at somewhere around 1/10th of trains.

[1] https://www.extension.iastate.edu/grain/topics/EstimatesofTo...

[2] https://www.aar.org/article/freight-rail-moving-miles-ahead-...

[3] https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/the-csx-advantage/fue...

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My understanding is that shipping is fuel efficient but not emissions efficient because that hasn't been required by the flag countries popularly used to register vehicles so you're basically seeing things like a half century-old design from an emissions control perspective. Since that industry is so cost sensitive something like this makes sense for closing that loophole.

I agree, but it seems like they're charging them for carbon, not for other emissions? If you want to cut down on carbon, taxing air freight seems like the way to go.

My concern is they're likely to redirect marine cargo to other modes which is going to be worse from a carbon intensity perspective.

Hopefully the tax will lead to different consumption patterns.

Once you stop flying the single most impactful change is stop buying stuff. Never mind energy, food, local travels.

For "stuff" the majority of emissions is in production (mining), but relentlessly moving matter across the world because fossil fuels are mostly untaxed is also a major factor

Agreed, but I would think this should be a “do both” situation since that'd preserve the status quo keeping air cargo more expensive and tell everyone that they need to make capital investments or change how they work to be less carbon intensive.

It's still not nearly as efficient of not moving things in the first place. Perhaps if shipping has to pay for it's carbon emissions then it'll shift the economic balance more towards local economies.

And many local economies are no longer capable of producing anything meaningful at the prices "locals" can actually afford.

How so? Last I checked essential goods are pretty cheap if you buy locally.

I do not know about other places but here in Canada it is exactly the other way around for the most part.

Last I checked essential goods are pretty expensive if you buy locally.

True. But at the same time, it should also be noted that the top 16 largest ships emit as much CO2 as all cars in the world.

https://www.lngtransfer.com/news/the-16-biggest-ships-produc...

No.

Ready your own link, the top 16 ships produce more particulate emissions (sulfur and nitrogen oxides especially), because of low regulations and cost pressures driving the use of low quality fuels (bunker fuel).

exactly, this is the kind of essential detail that gets glossed over by climate zealotry, and also one of the reasons why we direly need to shift the conversation away from CO₂ (a gas that is essential to life on earth) to pollution (shit that kills millions of people right now).

CO₂ and climate change is a diversionary tactic implicitly endorsed by the fossil fuel industry to focus us on an amorphous, far-future issue to grind away progress on pollution reduction now. and it's working, as evidenced by the fever-pitched focus on climate change rather than pollution, particularly by the neoliberal news outlets (npr, nyt, bbc, etc.).

Just a detail, but sulfur and nitrogen oxides are not particulate emissions.

Sulfur comes from low quality fuel, but nitrogen and particulate emissions depend a lot on the engine too.

I stand corrected.

And agree that EU's regulation would also benefit from taking a more holistic view on pollution than my (erroneous) zealotting on CO2 alone.

Global agreements have already been made to phase out the particulates globally and, before that in European areas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_control_area

> Emission control areas (ECAs), or sulfur emission control areas (SECAs), are sea areas in which stricter controls were established to minimize airborne emissions from ships as defined by Annex VI[1] of the 1997 MARPOL Protocol.

> The emissions specifically include SOx, NOx, ODSs and VOCs[2] and the regulations came into effect in May 2005.[3][4] Annex VI contains provisions for two sets of emission and fuel quality requirements regarding SOx and PM, or NOx, a global requirement and more stringent controls in special emission control areas (ECA).[5] The regulations stems from concerns about "local and global air pollution and environmental problems" in regard to the shipping industry's contribution. In January 2020, a revised more stringent Annex VI was enforced in the emission control areas with significantly lowered emission limits.[2]

The original factoid hit the headlines because all that work was done and so people had the data to do comparisions. It was slow but steady work to improve the environment and somehow it got turned into "environmentalists are stupid, EVs are stupid, anyone to the left of Kanye is stupid, if they really believed in climate change they'd do X".

https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Environment/Pages/Sulphur-oxi...

That's already the case, actually! A lot of the European waters have had quite strict limitations on the fuel's NOx and SOx contents for over 15 years already - and shipping was pretty much the last remaining industry allowed to use such high-pollutant fuel.

European waters - the ships burn the nasty shit in international waters and switch to clean fuel when approaching the countries. There needs to be some way to get them to burn the clean fuel all the time - perhaps by climate concerned nations removing naval protection from boats that aren't burning clean.

The article you linked does not support your claim.

Wrong, the most carbon efficient transport mode is not to ship at all. Taxing transport creates the opportunity for local manufacturing to become profitable

Agreed. Though if there is an easy win here like using slightly higher grade bunker oil to power the ships, the impact could be huge.

Sounds like a great place to start since the cost will be very low per ton of cargo?

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