Soot, particle pollution and heavy fuel oil: freighters and cruise liners are real climate killers. It’s high time for a change of course on the seas. The film shows how both innovations and tried-and-tested ideas can make shipping cleaner.
Container ships supply people all over the world with goods, while cruises attract millions of passengers every year. But ships also cause around three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
This is despite the fact that emission-free maritime trade has been possible for thousands of years – thanks to the wind. “We need to get back to sailing ships,” says Captain Andreas Lackner. Fifteen years ago, the Austrian and two friends put a sailing cargo ship into operation. The “Tres Hombres” has been working since 2010, transporting up to 40 tons of goods across the seas without an engine. The clipper ship takes cocoa and rum from the Caribbean to Europe, or 20,000 bottles of organic wine from La Rochelle to Copenhagen. “We’re closing the gap between fairly paid producers of organic goods and conscious consumers,” says Lackner.
Others have also rediscovered the power of the wind. Ralf Oltmanns from East Frisia sailed the world’s oceans at the age of 16, before founding an advertising agency. Now, 30 years later, the passionate sailor has developed a new twist on a century-old propulsion system in order to make large ships cleaner. The Flettner rotor, named after its inventor, Anton Flettner, is a type of sailing machine: a cylindrical structure that rotates in the wind to generate thrust. Oltmanns has used the original invention to create a modern product. “Depending on the size of the rotor and the wind conditions, a freighter can save between 5 and 25 percent on fuel,” the 63-year-old calculates. The rotor could make both cargo and passenger ships more climate-friendly. Anna Braren was convinced by his idea: Her shipping company equipped its first ship with the Flettner rotor in 2021.
With countless innovations and strict regulations, Norway is leading the way in the transition to emission-free shipping. The Scandinavians are focusing on electric motors and hybrid technologies. Climate change is already being felt in the Norwegian Arctic – another reason why the government is getting serious. From 2026, only emission-free ships will be allowed to sail in Norway’s most beautiful fjords. And climate-friendly tourist ships are already sailing along the traditional postal ship route.
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22 Comments
GREEN SCAMMERS
CLIMATE CHANGE CARBON FOOTPRINT
ANOTHER PONZI SCHEME TO TAX PEOPLE INDIRECTLY
OIL 🛢 IS LIFEBLOOD OF A CIVILIZATION
DW, why have the statement "the batteries are only climate friendly if charged with green shore power"? You are being ignorant
pricks DW.
We can all contribute by only buying things we need..
People talk about hydrogen powering cars and trucks, but those applications don't make sense. Shipping, however, could make all those challenges facing road transportation go away instantly. Hydrogen can be pumped and stored (and even produced) at ports which would massively simplify how it would be handled for cars.
Battery EVs for cars, hydrogen fuel cells for ships.
Humans aren’t destroying the climate. Only the Sun and the Earths rotational axis are what changes climate.
As long as the green option is 1 penny/cent dearer than diesel per litre, the shipping companies will not invest in new fuels. Profit is king, sod the planet. But we are all to blame as consumers who only want cheap products. A cruise to me would be a nightmare, not my thing at all.
worrying about pollution from ships and at the same time building entire seas full of windmills with all the bad consequences for marine life to save the earth. how hypocritical you environmental terrorists are.
Funny how did they trust to ship wine to a bunch of pirates 😂
During the sail a half of bottles will be empty and some of the ship crew got pregnant 😂
oh, boy…
35 tons on a dingy operated by 10 people vs average 180 000 tons on a container vessel operated by ~15 people
your precious cargo delivery time dependent on a weather vs tightly scheduled deliveries
electric boats in Norway… one of the biggest oil and gas producers in the World. The hypocrisy of Norway never fails to deliver
"whales store huge amounts of carbon"
? ? ? they what ? ? ? , in that case the more people the better… oh, wait. they keep saying the Earth is getting overcrowded
Flettner rotor… he "believes" its great, but… Various researches I've found say between 0% up to 45% fuel savings. Most of them don't mention averages but the higher the contribution of EU in funding of the research or installing their product the higher the efficiency goes 😂
Fun fact: in 2019 the shipping industry authority decided almost completely remove sulfur from the fuel. Turns out the effects of that were the somehow tragic. The average ocean surface temperature started to rise in the most congested shipping trails because the sulfur burned by ships was seeding the clouds and the clouds were reflecting the sun away from the surface.
This whole video is more of a propaganda than actual documentary.
Why don't you show War's effect on climate.
Don't talk nonsense. There's no evidence whatsoever that CO2 emissions pose any real threat to anyone. The warming they will cause at the current concentration of CO2 is utterly negligible and methane's level of threat is about 1/100th of that.
Thorium reactors.
These people would be considered as "woke" culture in the US.
🙁
Today I downloaded 15 of your vidioes on Various topics, what a level of sophistication, both in story telling and Information.
A small request to make more vidioes on Habitat loss of various plants and animals, another Great challenge of our times.
it feels like i have already seen this documentary earlier somewhere ? is it just me ?
Anybody know the name of the winery? Great documentary, as a airplane pilot, I feel guilty😮
Truth is, energy is actually to cheap…
But thats something nobody wants to hear.
And making energy more expensive will not get voters…
Wonderful documentary. Thanks DW to show us these important stories and in a way they are amazing for people who are learning English like me ❤
Yeah sure he is blaming environment and rain, while over the years of growing vines, soil itslef is drained, without any nutritions, no wonder it doesnt grow enough or same as it did few years ago. There is no cure for stupidity.
lol was that L emperatrice in the intro ?
Make the climate change promoters bathe before boarding.
This is now the second DW program on this topic that I have seen and they yet again completely failed to mention the ultimate solution nuclear power. The truth is that we've known how to ditch oil for shipping and go emissions free for six decades now but bureaucrats and politicians on both the right and the left have stonewalled the adoption of this technology. Its an absolute disgrace that we didn't solve this problem fifty years ago. The NS Savanah was a highly successful prototype for nuclear power in the commercial shipping industry. Sure the ship never actually made money but it was never expected to. The point of the Savanah was to demonstrate how to design different types of ships to run on nuclear power. The technology is available to us today to make shipping zero emissions if the powers that be would just allow the well developed nuclear propulsion systems that major navies have been using on some of their most important ships for over five decades to be used on large commercial ships as well. DW is only helping big oil by failing to discuss this option. I'm sure all the Texas oil men got a good laugh out of this. ☢️ 🚢 is what we need.