[joss82]

That is not what I understood from the article. What I understand is:

Fossil fuels are 40% of freight tonnage, but transporting them fuels is responsible for 50% of the total freight fuel consumption.

I assume 99% of freight uses fossil sources as fuel.

[mithras]

So basically a very friendly version of the rocket equation.

[joss82]

There is no mention of the amount of fuel used to transport the fuel in the article. From what I know it’s a tiny fraction: boats are efficient at transporting stuff (slowly)

[gertlex]

I kind of read this

> Fossil fuels are roughly 40% of maritime tonnage, but in the model they represent about half of maritime freight energy because coal, oil, and gas are mostly long-haul bulk trades. Moving a ton of scrap metal a short distance and moving a ton of oil or LNG across oceans are not the same transport-energy problem, even if both show up as one ton in a cargo table.

as being exactly what was being talked about... more fuel is spent on transporting fuel due to distance it travels.

but your comment made me re-visit (i.e. more closely skim...) the article, and it's really about: "as the demand for fossil fuels is projected to decrease, (1) less long-haul shipping is needed and (2) a greater fraction of shipping will be short-haul, which will be practical for other types of freight fueling (i.e. what's shown in the figure at the top of the article)

I have no sense of how realistic the figure is. For example, I don't know the current projections for decline of fossil fuel demand over ?? year timeframe.