Giant kites could pull ships across the ocean – and slash their carbon emissions | CNN
www.cnn.com
French company Airseas has developed the Seawing, a kite to help propel cargo ships, which it says could cut their carbon emissions by an average of 20%.
    • Overzeetop@beehaw.orgEnglish
      18·
      11 months ago

      I’m sorry, my bullshitometer just bend the high-stop pin. Im going to need him to define crazy power - ideally not using the words shit-ton or insane in the definition.

      • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
        3·
        10 months ago

        I think he means crazy as in wacky. I had a training kite-surfing kite (I wanted to learn to kite snowboard) and if I held it still (no grip adjustments) in high winds it would start to fly in a fast figure eight like a hyperactive Chihuahua at dinner time. I think that’s what he means by crazy, or at least that’s how I understood it because I have the experience for context.

  • mindbleach@lemmy.world
    132·
    11 months ago

    Jevon’s paradox says this might not help. If shipping gets faster, cheaper, and cleaner, because ships get free power on top of their engines - are we likely to do less of it?

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      10·
      11 months ago

      Are we likely to do less of it careening off the cliff, though? Because nothing has slowed it yet…

      Besides, I feel like the maintenance and, probably, management of it would require a separate fund so it might not be cheaper for the shipper, but hopefully cheaper than the fines for not implementing it (assuming we stick with capitalism which… meh, we shouldn’t anyway, it’s pretty exhausted at this point)

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.world
    5·
    11 months ago

    This is a technology that has been on the horizon for decades, but has only ever been used on a handful of vessels.

    If the benefits are as great as claimed, why isn’t this the standard everywhere?

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      82·
      11 months ago

      Personally I would assume because it’s a pain in the ass to maintain, when fossil fuels are less so and not presently heavily penalized.

      I mean really, wind was the original seafaring option, so we already know it can be harnessed that way, but the current capitalist framework rewards doing things cheap at the expense of the planet.

      Cargo ships use real bad fuels, anything would help, it just needs to be required or cheaper than polluting alternatives.

    • sndrtj@feddit.nl
      5·
      11 months ago

      Looks like internalized costs for this rather than the externalized costs for fossil fuels. Only regulation can truly fix that.