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One of the world's largest shipping lines will soon be the first to equip a container vessel with a sail. This week, global logistics firm Maersk said it would fit the device on a cargo ship in 2027. It comes during a sea change for shipping and planet-warming pollution, as NPR's Henry Larson reports.
HENRY LARSON, BYLINE: Unlike the tall ships of old, shipping liners have no rigging for the wind to sing through.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROTOR SAIL SPINNING)
LARSON: Instead, the sail soon to be mounted on a Maersk vessel is more like a giant steel column. It's called a rotor sail.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROTOR SAIL SPINNING)
LARSON: The column uses an electric motor to spin really fast, like in this video from its manufacturer, Anemoi. And as the wind swirls around the rotating column, the pressure gives the vessel an extra boost.
CLARE URMSTON: This thrust can be used to either increase the vessel's speed or you can reduce the consumption of the main engine.
LARSON: That's Clare Urmston, CEO of Anemoi. The company markets their rotor sales as a way to save on fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are the primary driver of climate change. She says the sales have netted about a 10% reduction in fuel usage on average. But the global shipping industry contributes about 3% of the world's emissions, which comes out to hundreds of millions of tons a year.
URMSTON: The market is huge, but the market is just now starting to move from accepting the technology to actually thinking about scaling the technology.
LARSON: Right now, just over a hundred large vessels have some wind assist installed compared to the tens of thousands of large ships under the jurisdiction of the International Maritime Organization, which is the U.N. agency that regulates much of the world's shipping.
INGRID IRIGOYEN: Every single one of us can just look around your house right now and go every single thing pretty much came on a ship. So it's a huge scale. And the challenges - we've got a big mountain to climb.
LARSON: Ingrid Irigoyen is managing director of the Center for Green Market Activation. She's worked for years to get ship owners and the companies that charter them to embrace green fuels - power centers that would greatly limit the carbon emission from ships. She says things are tricky right now.
IRIGOYEN: The last 18 months or so have been pretty rocky for a lot of companies that I think had really strong, good intentions about decarbonizing their supply chains, decarbonizing their operations.
LARSON: Some shipping executives have joined a wider retreat from climate efforts this decade. Data from the International Chamber of Shipping shows many are less confident about hydrogen and ammonia and other new green products becoming commercially viable fuel sources.
GAVIN ALLWRIGHT: The cost of alternative fuels currently is very high.
LARSON: Gavin Allwright is head of a trade group that represents ship owners and companies operating wind technology.
ALLWRIGHT: So therefore, you've got to try to level that playing field for those new fuels. The interesting thing is, with wind propulsion, the higher price of the fuel, the better the business model is.
LARSON: He spoke with NPR from an international maritime organization meeting where members were debating future greenhouse gas regulations on shipping that could drastically alter the fate of green technology in the sector.
ALLWRIGHT: Whatever happens here, the industry is still moving forward. We've still got a strategy in place. We just don't have the tools in place to implement that.
LARSON: The Trump administration, along with several other countries, has worked to fracture support for what it calls a carbon tax. But the working group is still trying for a solution, one that International Chamber of Shipping's Chris Waddington says is needed.
CHRIS WADDINGTON: We need certainty - regulatory certainty - to be able to invest.
LARSON: The International Maritime Organization has more meetings this fall to try and decide the fate of a global standard for greener shipping. But in the meantime, the number of vessels sailing cleaner is slowly - very slowly - growing. Henry Larson, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF YO-YO MA PERFORMANCE OF JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH'S "CELLO SUITE NO 1 IN G MAJOR, PRELUDE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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