Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by crote 794 days ago
The problem is that carbon emissions come from more than just fuel. You also have to take into account the construction of the ship, the crew, loading/unloading, and pre/post-transport.

Best-case scenario, you're looking at a crew of 4 who can transport 6x350T in a year, or 525T / person-year. Meanwhile a container ship has a crew of 20, but it can carry 240.000T, and do in the ballpark of 50 transatlantic crossings a year - so 600.000T / person-year. That discrepancy is large enough that even things like per-crew-member CO2 contributions starts to become relevant.

I'm all for decarbonizing shipping, but this boat is nothing more than a rich person's plaything. It'll contribute absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Maybe sail is viable, but at least put it on realistically-sized vessel like [0].

[0]: https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/new-wind-powered...

1 comments

I don't really understand how the yearly tonnage per person is relevant here