The answer to decarbonising international trade is blowing in the wind, according to an Australian-based academic who says it's time for sail-based transport to make a comeback.
The global shipping industry is heavily reliant on diesel and accounts for 3 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, Dr Christiaan De Beukelaer told Sunday Morning.
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He spent five months as a shipmate aboard the Avontuur, a 1920s trading sailboat, to find out more about how old tech could be harnessed for a carbon-free age.
“For thousands of years, before we started using fossil fuels, we were able to trade and connect different parts of the world across the oceans, mostly using wind propulsion, using sailing ships,” De Beukelaer says.
The global economy has grown exponentially since the heyday of sail-powered trade peaked in the mid-19th century, he says. We now transport about 550 times more cargo than then we did then - that growth has been powered by coal and oil.
The shipping industry is already looking into how it can decarbonise, he says.
“There is a lot of investment in new fuels and technologies that make things more efficient.
"But the reality is that it will still need some sort of an alternative fuel, which right now is very expensive, much more difficult to get, and the supply of it is not as large or as stable as fossil fuels are.”
Returning to wind propulsion is the obvious answer, he says, but with modern tech twists.
“Shipowners are making all kinds of investments in different types of technologies, which include kites, Flettner rotors.
“You have rigid sails, you have new designs of soft sails, new types of rig, a lot of the lessons that we've learned from aerospace design are now applied to commercial cargo transport.”
We’re catching up on a 150-year technological hiatus, he says.
“The technology is ready to go. There's already about two dozen ships operating with wind assisted propulsion technology, operating commercially.
“And then there are the handful of more traditional trading ships like the Avontuur who have been operating for round about a decade.
“So it is possible to do it, but as always, with shifting behaviour, with shifting business practices, the question is what is the bottom line?”
There is little financial incentive to shift at the moment, he says.
“Right now there is no price on carbon emissions from shipping, but even worse than that, the fuel that is used by the shipping industry internationally does not have a carbon price on it but it also is not taxed at all.
“And if you consider that the industry is using 300 million pounds of fossil fuels a year, generating about one gigatonne or 1 billion tons of carbon emissions, that's huge, that's an immense amount of carbon and an immense amount of fuel.”
Shipping is a highly polluting industry. Photo: 123RF
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) the UN agency that regulates shipping, has the authority to set carbon emissions reductions targets, he says.
“Currently what's on the table is that shipping will have to halve its emissions between 2008 and 2050. But that is nowhere nearly enough for shipping to make a proportionate contribution to keeping the temperature below 1.5 degrees of warming, not at all.
“This year the IMO is meeting in July to agree on a revised strategy that would increase the level of ambition and force shipping companies to further reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible.”
That is likely to be a revised target of zero, or net zero emissions by 2015, he says.
“The regulatory environment is set to get a lot tighter.”
One of the most ambitious proposals for that levy was made by the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.
One proposal is for a levy with a starting price on greenhouse gas emissions of $US100 a tonne, he says.
“That would give a very significant financial incentive to shift away from fossil fuel to alternative fuels.
“Because that amount would help close the price gap that currently exists between fossil fuels and those alternative fuels.”
If that does come to pass, shipping companies will have no excuse to wait, he says.
“If they wait any longer making investments in clean technology for shipping, they will lose out and you will have companies who are making investments, really consolidating their market position, compared to companies who fail to invest now.
“And that's basically the thing that won't only help the uptake of wind propulsion, but of the general decarbonisation of the industry.”
