Heh, its not what you think.
All I can say is AVAST ye!
The company that has that on the drawing board has just delivered its first cargo, on a decidedly older prototype.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...tral-chocolateWhich ticks more ethical boxes? Fairtrade organic olive oil from the Palestinian territories? Or organic chocolate grown by a co-operative of Grenadian peasant farmers on a solar-powered farm and transported to Europe from the Caribbean in a sailing ship with no engines?
The olive oil sells for £8.50 for a 500ml bottle, but the first 24,000 bars of "handpressed, single-estate, vanilla-free, vintage rootstock, grown-with-a-windward aspect" chocolate in the world arrives in Portsmouth next week – winds permitting – on the Tres Hombres, a 32-tonne square-rigged wooden sailing cargo ship.
The environmental impact of growing, processing and transporting the chocolate is said to be minimal, but the retail price for the food billed to taste of fruit, tobacco and grass is eye-watering. A 100g bar of Gru Grococo will sell at an introductory price of £12.95, but if bought while still at sea will cost £60 for six bars – the equivalent of around £1.50 a mouthful.
"It may well be the most expensive chocolate in Britain," says Chantal Coady of Rococo chocolate who will sell it online. "But we think it is the only truly carbon-neutral chocolate. People are not paying anywhere near the real environmental price for chocolate when they buy an ordinary bar. This is chocolate without an impact. Plus, for every bar we make, we are returning 60-70% of the retail price cost to the growers, compared to next to nothing with conventional chocolate. All the value added with this cocoa is in Grenada."
Industry and government research suggests that shipping by conventional sea or air transport is only a very small part of food's overall environmental impact. But Fairtransport, the Dutch company which owns the Tres Hombres ship, argues that the only truly sustainable way to carry food from the tropics is by sail.
The Tres Hombres, which can take 30 tonnes of goods a time, crosses the Atlantic several times a year. In two years it has shipped aid to Haiti and elsewhere, as well as rum and fruit.
"This is only a beginning. The next step is to build a much larger sail-powered cargo ship, a 3,000 tonne EcoLiner equipped for container traffic and fully compe ive with the oil guzzling compe ors", says Fairtransport director Jorne Langelaan. "We want to re-establish sailing ships as a natural alternative to an anti-ecological culture. We want to see a revival of the great age of sail, as a means of Fair transport for cargo around the Atlantic".
http://www.care2.com/causes/this-cho...ail-video.html
Here is the company's website, in case you want to poke around.
http://www.fairtransport.eu/
Nifty idea.
If one takes the green colored glasses off, the real prospects for this are a bit dim:
I doubt it will be very economical any time soon, but with the kinds of pressures expected on oil/fuel costs, we may very well see a version of this. It should be noted that since the global trade downturn there is a huge glut in transport capacity. Cargo ships are already sitting idle on a global scale. This may potentially serve a niche market that will do well despite this. Such niches for all sorts of things have done surprisingly well in our slow growth global economic environment.
(here is a bit of background on that for those interested)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8ETAA020120329
The company is going to try and secure financing for this according to its press reports. Good luck with the EU banking collapse, guys.
Good luck trying to sell cargo space to anyone but a green freak. Mariners embraced powered ships because of the fickle nature of winds. It's not like Apple can afford to have their next generation iphones sitting in the middle of the Pacific becalmed for weeks.
If container ships were forced/taxed into using clean fuel instead of the dirtiest usable sulfur-saturated oil and forced to dump their ballast water 100 miles outside of territorial waters, then alternative propulsion energy would be more attractive, just like if BigCoal and Nuclear were forced to cleanup their end-to-end messes.
Maybe they can build a tractor trailer that runs on rubber bands.
First prototype
If one tools around the company website, their plans are to get the large scale nouveau clipper ships as hybrids with engines for such cases.
Cargo shipping would demand it.
(cough cough) thread le (cough cough)
You can't say it is an untried technology.First prototype
Oh come on. It's hybrid. They have an electric motor there someplace. Maybe it's wind powered...
The MS Beluga SkySail used a giant kite to help power the freighter along when wind conditions were favourable. It took two months to complete the voyage, a bit longer than normal, but the use of wind power enabled the ship to save about $1000 a day.
http://welkerswikinomics.com/blog/20...wered-vessels/
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-Ne...hip-by-30.html
No reason not to take advantage of it if it's favorable.
Another possibility is simply putting a wind turbine onboard to run motors:
http://www.marinepropulsors.com/smp/...2_Bockmann.pdf
Bottom line: not too feasible, but possible.
Certainly, it is possible to run generators and shipboard electricity on large ships.
Simple, cheap, and retrofittable. Possible to do with a lot of off the shelf existing technology, from what I read on it.
It is a brilliant idea, IMO.
Once again, if all countries taxed ship fuel (I think, eg, the US doesn't), then saving fuel with, eg windpower, co-generation hybrids, becomes much more attractive.
And for your driving pleasure...
yes they can
Maybe those ships can use Chocobo power:
Leave it to the usual parties to knock what is going to make some people a lot of money while being green at the same time.
Yes of course all those successful business men who spend their whole lives making money are just too stupid to use this "obvious" money saving "technology".
Strawman.Yes of course all those successful business men who spend their whole lives making money are just too stupid to use this "obvious" money saving "technology".
Logical fail thread!
The carbon money makers have so much momentum power, $450B/year for Exxon alone, they aggressively, successively attack alternatives, and do the same to carbon economizing, because they know the sooner carbon energy becomes scarce, they'll make even more $Ts.Yes of course all those successful business men who spend their whole lives making money are just too stupid to use this "obvious" money saving "technology".
Do you seriously think that they are also not preparing for when alternate energy is more profitable?
Very cool. From sail to steam to oil to ?.
Interesting to see what will be next.
no, why should they? They have easy, low-hanging-fruit $Ts before them from carbon energy depletion. Many decades before transport is running on something other than carbon fuel. short-term-itis rules.
Yes of course because they have complete control over which energy sources that are used and can prevent all other sources from being used in the market. All these other "obvious" economically viable sources of energy then just go unused at Exxon's whim. None this has to do with their economic viability but rather energy company conspiracy theories and the NWO. I go it.
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