Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
If you live near a large port, you’ve probably seen cargo ships---they’re these massive boats that
carry everything from cars to bananas, all over the world.
Right now, these ships all run on fossil fuel. We wanted to know - is there a cleaner way to transport our stuff around the world?
We had Sedi-Anne Blachford and Samantha Zhang from our Possibly team look into this.
Sedi-Anne Blachford: Hi, Megan!
Samantha Zhang: Hello!
Megan Hall: So, is there a cleaner way to run these massive ships?
Sedi-Anne Blachford: Well, to be fair, moving things around by cargo ships is already way more efficient than using airplanes or trucks.
Samantha Zhang: But still, we ship so much stuff around the world that these cargo ships do create a lot of carbon pollution--- somewhere around 3% of all of our emissions.
Megan Hall: So, what can we do to reduce that pollution?
Sedi-Anne Blachford: The shipping industry has been looking into all sorts of solutions, from fueling the ships with hydrogen or ammonia to even using nuclear power.
Stephen Porder: I teach about this stuff, and even from my lectures in the fall, I’m having to replace all my slides for my lectures in early March, because the technology is changing. It’s a whirlwind.
Sedi-Anne Blachford: That’s Stephen Porder. Professor of Environment and Society at Brown University.
Stephen Porder: But I’m also the co-founder of Possibly.
Samantha Zhang: And Stephen says the latest innovation is using batteries!
Megan Hall: Batteries to run a cargo ship? How is that possible? You must need some pretty giant batteries.
Sedi-Anne Blachford: Yeah, they are big! In fact, a lot of them are the size of shipping containers.
Samantha Zhang: But that’s actually pretty convenient. Batteries used for electricity storage for the grid already come in shipping containers, and of course:
Stephen Porder: Ports are made to lift those big, heavy shipping containers in and out really quickly.
Megan Hall: So instead of having to plug in and wait to charge the ship, like I do with my car, they could just put in a whole new battery?
Sedi-Anne Blachford: Exactly. No long wait to recharge.
Stephen Porder: They just swap out the batteries and they’re ready to go again.
Megan Hall: So, you put a massive battery on a cargo ship, and that’s enough to get it across the ocean?
Samantha Zhang: Right now, the ships that are using these batteries can only travel about 620 miles, but the technology is improving all the time.
Sedi-Anne Blachford: China is testing its first all electric cargo ship, a 10,000 ton vessel, near Shanghai this spring.
Samantha Zhang: Plus, with fuel prices the way they are these days, switching to electricity might start to make the most economic sense for companies that ship goods across the ocean.
Sedi-Anne Blachford: And there’s one more twist to this story…
Stephen Porder: Over 40% of what we’re shipping around the world is fossil fuels.
Samantha Zhang: Which means that if we switch to clean energy to power the rest of our economy, we’ll reduce the need for shipping altogether.
Megan Hall: And shipping less stuff means less carbon pollution?
Sedi-Anne Blachford: You got it. It turns out reducing emissions in the shipping industry is pretty interconnected with reducing emissions everywhere else.
Samantha Zhang: And for Stephen, that’s an exciting connection.
Stephen Porder: It’s those kinds of synergies that I think really give people like me optimism for a better, more efficient and less polluting world without sacrifice. Like we don’t need to ship fossil fuels around if we’re not using them.
Sedi-Anne Blachford: That being said, completely electrifying cargo ships isn’t going to be easy. It will probably take 10 or even 20 years.
Stephen Porder: We’re very much on the learning curve. We’ve been running ships off oil for well over a century. We’ve been running anything off these kinds of batteries for like, a couple of years.
Samantha Zhang: But Stephen says, five years ago, nobody was talking about electric ships and now they’re here, and so who knows what five years will bring.
Megan Hall: Got it! Thanks Samantha and Sedi-Anne.
That’s it for today. You can find more information, or ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, at ask possibly dot org. You can also subscribe to Possibly wherever you get your podcasts or follow us on social media at “ask possibly”
Possibly is a co-production of Brown University’s Institute for Environment and Society, Ocean State Media and WBRU.
