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Comment by rmah | Hacker News Reader

At end of life, cargo ships are cut up into scrap steel. That scrap is then melted down and re-used to make new steel. I strongly suspect that, if you take into account the energy used to manufacture the ship, sailboats will turn out to have a far higher carbon footprint per ton-mile of shipping than normal cargo ships. Cargo ships, as dirty as they seem on a per-ship basis, are crazy efficient on a per ton-mile basis.

But all that aside, sailing cargo ships are nothing more than a curiosity. Their capacity is tiny, they are very slow, are limited in their routes, etc. And as far as I can tell Grain de Sail's business is NOT shipping. It's some sort of luxury wine & chocolates with an eco theme. I suspect the boat is just a way for the owner to have the company pay for his yachts (the boats only make 2 cargo trips a year) .

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Up until WWII, Finnish shippers were competitive using sailing ships for long range bulk transport of grain, Eric Newby details one such voyage as a sailor in The Last Grain Race (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Grain_Race). I see no particular reason why sailing ships with a little optimization couldn't be competitive these days if they were back then, especially since the fuel prices comparatively is higher now.

The real kicker is labor cost per ton. Bigger ships don’t have a proportionately bigger crew. And sailboats were quite labor intensive.

Sounds like you just “created some jobs”

It’s totally possible that manipulating the sails and rigging is motorized and automated on these ships. Would be interested to see a demo of the operation of this ship.

I think the next thing you run into is height.

Sailboats are much taller than fossil fuel cargo ships of the same size. A lot of harbors have bridges in their path.

Don't know about CO², but scrapping of cargo ships is a huge polluter. Places like Alang ship breaking yard are nightmarish on both the human and environmental level.

"Cargo ships, as dirty as they seem on a per-ship basis, are crazy efficient on a per ton-mile basis."

As I understand it, this reinforces the parent's comment about scaling down. Efficiency facilitates scaling up, increased demand, supply and consumption, and inevitably, increased carbon footprint and other environmental issues. The comment is not only directed at the footprint of "normal" cargo ships, it's directed at the footprint of the consumption that they enable.

When it is cheap and efficient to ship goods, then more goods will be produced, shipped and consumed; this has an enviromental impact. If it becomes more expensive and less efficient, then perhaps less goods would be produced, shipped and consumed, with reduced environmental impact.

it'll still grow to the limits of the system: impact on the environment is not unique to post-industrial civilisation. It'll saturate either way, with the same effects, just less people.

If scale down, the limits of the system might be less, lowering total environmental impact when compared with the total impact from a system with higher limits.

The cost of scrapping a massive cargo to reuse its materials is going to produce an enormous amount of CO2.

Though, there are already sail technologies you can add to existing shipping. I’m amazed more haven’t been retrofitted, quite frankly.

In the article it states they make 5 trips per year.

Do you have any number that can back up your claims? And any real info about the owners having yachts? If not, you should really delete your conspiracy shitty comment

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