Yes. Ships, for one - no way you can power an oceangoing large ship with batteries for the entire trip, but doable with LPG (which is essentially a propane/butane mix). Assuming that further technology (chemical or biotech) gets developed to combine it to form larger hydrocarbons, it can also be used as a precursor for airflight synthfuel.
Both Yanmar and Kawasaki are developing large marine four-stroke piston engines for hydrogen, with 2025 as launch date.
Ammonia-fuelled piston engines are easy, their only problem is idling due to the poor combustion properties of ammonia, which you can solve in the pragmatic way by using a little hydrocarbons during idle - combined with power from shore during docking, that still gets you >95% emission reductions.
Ammonia to my knowledge has a problem of both potential toxicity (both if gas escapes in refuelling and NOx emissions after burning) and needing enriched pure oxygen rather than running with atmospheric air.
Propane or other hydrocarbons look superior to both of these to me.
A full EV transition would also free up quite a lot of biofuels. Not enough on its own, but still significant.
To my knowledge wind-powered cargo ships can only supplement cargo ships and can't fully substitute for a proper fuel source, but I would absolutely love to be proven wrong.
The bulk of biofuels are a dead end (although some types of biofuels are valuable in recycling waste products), because modern agriculture basically just turns oil into food; BEV tractors basically don't work due to the range and charging-times needed on an already very heavy vehicle.
I don’t think green hydrogen or synthetic fuel is a realistic option yet. As to a fully wind powered boats, the last fully wind powered cargo boat used commercially lasted until the 1960’s it lost but not by some huge margin. So yes fossil fuels win, but they don’t win by such a huge margin that a fuel costing 4x as much also wins.
Hybrid battery/solar + wind boats are still a common thing for houseboats and pleasure craft in part because of the cost advantages. At even a 2x cost bump over bunker fuel I suspect bulk shipping would start to go a similar route. Militaries and billionaire super yachts might go with hydrogen or synthetic fuel’s it just a question of how quickly their prices fall.
It is going to be some kind of chemical fuel, it is just a question of what and when. The alternative is just people not doing their physics homework and being totally wrong.
Wind is what provides power and scales incredibly far, we already have individual floating 16MW wind turbines. The very largest ships are approaching 60MW, but rarely operate at full power instead “slow steaming” to conserve fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_steaming
The cost of the ship alone is irrelevant if you’re trying to sell fuel at 4x the price almost nobody is going to be willing to pay when they’re not even willing to pay full price at todays fuel prices instead choosing to travel slower than sailing ships while still paying for fuel.
PS: As to battery weight, ships scale really well around weight which is why we have ships moving 200,000+ tractor trailers worth of cargo. There’s fully battery powered ships traveling hundreds of miles for local delivery to remote areas. Which actually means going from Asia to Europe or Africa with some battery swapping is viable. Higher upfront costs and extra stops, but drastically reduced fuel consumption.
You're going to need chemical fuels to solve this problem. You really have to get to grips with basic physics here. Global warming can't be solved by science deniers.
PS: How are you going to battery swap on a ship? Nevermind the cost of such a thing. This is just another absurd idea stacked top of an already absurd idea.
I am not suggesting a wind turbine is an ideal fit for a cargo ship just mentioning how much power we’re already extracting on floating devices that move with the ocean.
Ultra slow steaming is 40% of max power for a 46MW cargo ship that’s 24MW so we’re in the ballpark what comes next is hardcore engineering by companies who understand the industry and they say the math is really close to working at current fuel prices. It’s you who wants people to swap to ultra expensive fuels and I’m just point out that “bunker fuel” > wind but wind > ultra expensive fuels.
Again, the wind turbines you are suggest are far too big for a ship. It is totally impossible. You are not going to get more than a tiny percentage of power from wind from this. At best, you are just going to have literal sails that take off some of the power demand from the engine. The ship will still have to be powered predominately by chemical fuels.
Look, you're flat out denying the physics of this problem. You cannot solve this problem with science denier. You are doing the same thing that climate change deniers are doing.
“Flat out denying the physics of this problem” you’re arguing that sailing ships don’t work.
Maersk the largest shipbuilder in the world already got flettner rotors to provide useful levels of propulsion, ADD a kite system and you’re traveling faster than commercial shipping doing slow steaming. As I’ve said repeatedly they don’t quite work at current fuel prices, but you want to increase fuel prices.. Read up on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Onego_Deusto for why kite’s didn’t take off it was all about the economics not the underlying physics.
PS: Without paying for fuel the economics changes enough we probably aren’t going to see 200,000+ TEU ships and routes would optimize for winds. But that’s not an inherent problem it’s just a tradeoff, perhaps we invest in larger port’s that just an expense not a deal killer.
This is just you handwaving the problem away. You will need a very reliable supply of energy for this. It actual makes more sense to convert that green energy to something like hydrogen for powering ships. If done at scale, cost will be not much more than the cost of the wind and solar energy itself. Which is potentially very low. And nevermind the fact that you have nowhere near the capacity of batteries to power your ships.
> “Flat out denying the physics of this problem” you’re arguing that sailing ships don’t work.
The largest sailship ever has a displacement tonnage of around 5,000 tons. Modern cargo ships are closer to 250,000 tons. Sailships don't work at the scale you're imagining them. It is basically going back to the 19th century in terms of shipping capacity.
> Maersk the largest shipbuilder in the world already got flettner rotors to provide useful levels of propulsion, ADD a kite system and you’re traveling faster than commercial shipping doing slow steaming.
Skysail just reduces fuel consumption somewhat. It also seem to have disappeared as a serious idea about a decade ago: https://www.ship-technology.com/features/feature-skysails-br...
Solar is extremely reliable as long as you have an oversupply when all you want to to charge batteries. At sub 2c/kWh it’s highly variable but build in 50% extra and you’re only at 3c/kWh and now very consistent across a full week. Obviously, there’s varying tradeoffs so if the cheapest solution is to stick them on a boat and charge em in another country that’s what would end up happening. There’s also obviously tradeoffs between moving shipping containers vs moving electricity but again that’s an optimization problem not some inherent limitation.
Skysail isn’t viable at current fuel prices, the technology works just fine. Current sail designs are of limited value along current routes, but those routes are also optimized for fossil fuels.
Club Med 2 built on 1992 was 15,000 tons and a quite traditional design for aesthetics, again Skysail can significantly boost propulsion. Thousands of economically viable modern cargo ships are 50,000 ton panamax ships and plenty are well below that, those 250,000 ton monsters are an economic optimization between a handful of major ports not some inherent requirement.
The total crew size is largely independent of cargo size, but even relatively small ships are moving 100’s of TEU per worker. At that point it’s only a question of what’s the most efficient design economically not what’s the largest ship.
Seriously, you seem like someone who is obsessed with doing it with batteries, not a person even remotely interested in finding a working solution.
Meanwhile, the alternative, just making hydrogen with the same renewable energy source and powering your ships with it, is sitting right there as an obvious answer. If you already admit to the existence of $0.02/kWh electricity, then the rest of the cost equation is also going to be low here. You've already solved the economics of the issue. The rest is scaling up, and this time there is no need for sails or downsizing ships.
Real world capacity factor Capacity factor 27.9% (average 2017-2019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Mountain_Solar_Facility that’s surprisingly close to the theoretical maximum for the location and design. Some break 30% but again it’s not about maximizing output just how much it cost to guarantee we can fill X TEU worth of shipping containers per ~week. Thus it don’t matter if there a 18 hour period one day when they aren’t being charged as long as you can charge enough on average.
> Meanwhile, the alternative, just making hydrogen
Sure let’s pay vastly more per gallon that’s an easy selling point. Hydrogen has maximum limits imposed by physics that severely limit end to end efficiency. It’s a dangerous bitch to store, transport etc. Low density, damages metals it comes in contact with etc, even rocketry got away from the stuff even though it has significant advantages for them.
Nobody is using the stuff because it’s got huge problems.
You've already admitted that solar is just $0.02/kWh. You can do the rest of the math and realize that hydrogen will also be very cheap. You're entirely thinking in cliches now. It is "battery = cheap, hydrogen = expensive" despite your own argument contradicting that claim.
In reality, people will just some kind of chemical fuels. If not hydrogen directly, then something derived from it like ammonia or synfuels. It is already happening in fact, and your obsession simply won't happen.
Look at hydrogen fuel station pricing sometimes even using fossil fuels and compare costs vs bunker fuel. There’s projections it could possibly get close to US gas prices in 20 years, but that includes road taxes, high refining costs, transportation, etc and are therefore much higher than bunker fuel actually used by boats. So the optimistic projections are doubling a ship’s fuel costs and current prices are much higher than that.
As to your “nonsensical idea” complaint, companies actually saving companies money today using it. This isn’t some hypothetical, actual ships on the ocean are using large scale batteries to save on fuel costs. Further, the absolute largest car carrier in the world is smaller than the largest sailing vessel ever built, they load and unload from the front so sticking sails on top wouldn’t be a problem. Fossil fuels are cheap, but hydrogen isn’t viable today which is why ships aren’t using it and it’s not projected to be viable for decades. Anyone who tried using hydrogen would simply be eaten alive by the competition.
The thing about hydrogen is that is made from an extremely plentiful resource: water + green energy. That puts the cost floor at below that of bunker fuel. In fact, the cost floor is pretty close to zero. So you are basically repeating the generic "renewable resources can never be cheap" argument. But it has been discredited.
Nobody uses anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. You are making up imaginary scenarios.
Even optimistic estimates put Hydrogen well above bunker fuel.
> Nobody is using anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel.
Cargo ships with hot swapping batteries are already in use. At that point it’s Europe to Asia is an infrastructure problem not a research problem. People hope to eventually solve Hydrogen’s issues with production and storage but have made minimal progress over the last 20 years. Just because we want technology to work doesn’t mean it’s actually possible to build it.
Hell just look at how much people have hyped up Nuclear as a source of cheap electricity as long as we invest in more R&D. Except even with huge investments in new designs etc there’s been zero actual progress in lowering costs.
The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different?
Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs.
FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.
Only at a significant loss. You can go out and buy a hydrogen powered car today and pay more for the car, have worse range, pay more for energy to move that car, and have to deal with limited infrastructure. People are operating battery powered boats at a profit, that’s a monumental difference.
Limiting yourself to “free” for electricity means spending more money on equipment. Actually making industrial scale hydrogen requires expensive electrolysis equipment and having that sit idle 95% of the time is expensive independent of electricity costs. Similarly aiming for seasonal storage requires investment in storage so it’s there when you want it. This isn’t free and no you can’t just reuse natural gas systems, even just detecting small leaks requires different equipment, the demand is higher, hydrogen embrittlement is a serious problem, and the energy density is different.
You can consistently get ~3c/kWh for close to 8 hours a day via building your solar farm, but that means your electrolysis equipment is still idle 66% of the time and your still paying 3c/0.18 = 16.7c/kWh just for electricity ignoring other costs to get 1kWh of useful energy at the end.
This is why Hydrogen is currently expensive, until something fundamentally changes with the underlying economics due to new technology it’s going to stay expensive.
Nuclear has both economic and risk issue. Legislation impacted individual countries but a handful are built each year. It’s not even just disasters, several nuclear projects have gone wildly over budget scaring both small countries and free market investors. The risks are high even ignoring accidents and the rewards don’t match those risks.
Westinghouse top executives were convicted of fraud for over covering up project failures in two canceled South Carolina nuclear reactors: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-westinghouse-exe...
That’s part of a long list of failed US reactors and an even longer list globally some of which where even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cancelled_nuclear_pow...
That said, I acknowledge politics has played a role it’s simply not the most important one. Japan was happy with nuclear until an unexpected 500 dollar bill, other countries look at that and get concerned.
Please stop making shit up. We already have seen people reuse or at least test natural gas infrastructure with hydrogen. There are no showstopper problems. It is a fully solvable problem and is going to happen.
You literally are making up your own fictional scenario to rationalize how you can disconnect $0.02/kWh electricity from cheap hydrogen. This is pure incoherent rubbish.
Ultimately, you are creating an alternative reality to rationalize your delusion that batteries can power anything while nothing else can. No fucking idea why are you ranting about nuclear safety either. It is one of the safest energy sources out there.
Economics isn’t rubbish. Yes you can get X kWh at below Yc/kWh every month, *as long as you are willing to let equipment sit mostly idle. My point about 3c/kWh is simply the point where you can both operate equipment 1/3 of the time in most locations thus minimizing transmission issues, and you aren’t limited by the surplus of the local electricity grid. It’s simply a point of comparison. Sure, you can get
It’s also meaningful when including transportation and all other overhead bunker fuel gives you ~15c/kWh after you burn it, though this varies a lot. https://agtransport.usda.gov/Fuel/Daily-Bunker-Fuel-Prices/y...
Include overhead and green hydrogen generation is currently dramatically more expensive and it needs drastic efficiency gains to be viable. That’s simply the truth.
You should stop doing logical backflips and making nonsensical comparisons.
Hydrogen systems still being classified as prototypes after decades of research should tell you something. Nobody is making hydrogen boats because they’re simply inferior in just about every conceivable way. Cars got heavily subsidized, billions in R&D over decades, and are a failure. Hydrogen boats aren’t even vaguely worth trying to bring to market.
Economics uncovers bullshit, you can’t hand wave away the cost of infrastructure, someone needs to pay to create and maintain it. Solar can hit 2c/kWh for a few hours per day in a few areas of the globe, but now you’re both idling infrastructure and stuck with long distance transportation of Hydrogen and or electricity which has their own associated costs. Just do X sounds great, but doing X always has associated costs.
For comparison, including transportation and all other overhead bunker fuel gives you ~15c/kWh after you burn it, though this varies a lot. It’s horrifyingly polluting, but dirt cheap.
Scale alone isn’t going to fix green hydrogen it requires a fundamental breakthrough.
Seriously, who do you work for? I can't imagine you not having an agenda here.
I'm saying that hydrogen is a bad option, but if e.g. this renewable propane turns out to cost $1000/litre then hydrogen wins by default. It wouldn't be that surprising, current synthfuel is expensive AF. And this new headline hasn't been commercialized yet, so it might not be viable after all.
The benefit of hydrogen fuel is that, while it works poorly, it does work and is already in use today, in e.g. forklifts. It was in use decades ago, in fact. It's boring and low-risk, if we can't find anything good.
Hydrogen leaks out of almost everything, embrittles steel, is hard to store as a liquid and needs very high pressures to store a meaningful amount as a gas.
Net-zero is nice, but extraction and storage is net-negative.
Though that was because it was badly mismanaged and the technology wasn't there yet.
Nuclear in civilian hands is an absolute no-go for proliferation / terrorism concerns.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/22/travel/wind-powered-cargo-shi...
1. Kites attached by cable (deployed, high altitude for consistent winds)
2. Magnus effect cylindrical turbines that rise out of the ship.
Several have been built and people have generally gone "huh, thats cool but it's way too expensive".
Thats the main reason why theres currently only 1 in the whole world.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/1182973358/step-aboard-the-nu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi... comments the major issue is the costs of specialized infrastructure, and points out how research about a modern design concluded "further maturity of nuclear technology and the development and harmonisation of the regulatory framework would be necessary before the concept would be viable."
Nuclear power plants are much more expensive, and require a much higher (and more expensive) level of labor. These fixed costs are not reduced when full power is not needed.
Put your reactors on land, when the grid has too much power you direct it to something like this (or the hydrogen generator that showed up here a few days ago) and convert it to chemical energy.