it seems like people in countries like mine (rich, western) find it very easy to blame the supply side of the equation rather than the demand side of the equation -- e.g. companies are to blame for wrecking the environment because they ship stuff in planes to save money / save time. but the general public are also to blame as the source of demand.
what might make a huge positive difference for the environment would be rolling out policies to help reduce population growth (or the absolute population count) of people such as myself with relatively affluent polluting lifestyles, but we might have to wait until there is mass suffering right here right now due to environment reasons across many countries with political power before there is substantial change.
>>...the general public are also to blame as the source of demand.
Yes, but companies have absolute control over what mode of transport is used to do shipping, not consumers. Demand is good for the economy, so you do not want to quash it. You DO want companies to satisfy demand responsibly.
In the maritime trade industry, we can absolutely fuel global shipping 100% on GHG emission-free renewables using H2 fuel cells. The tide is starting to turn, albeit a little too slow for my taste. Granted, the challenge is exponentially harder for extreme high power density kWh consumers like aircraft. Ships are very high kWh consumers, but don't have the power density of aircraft, so much lower density/higher weight fuels and engines can be employed that makes the problem significantly easier to solve.
...Also, Thanos, please count me among one of your childless population growth inhibitors. I don't dissagree with you there.
Carrying large tanks of compressed hydrogen on merchant ships isn't safe or practical. Sustainable carbon-neutral liquid bio-fuels are a more likely long term solution. Those can be used with minimal changes to our existing transportation systems once the production cost comes down.
H2 fuel is absolutely practical and we're integrating it into designs as we speak. However, we are using Cryogenic Liquid H2 (conforming to IMO IGC(1)) which msy be stored at atmospheric pressure, not compressed gas, although additional regulations for shipboard H2 storage are emerging as the popularity grows(2). It's not dissimilar from carrying LNG.
Biofuels still release GHG's (2), not just carbon), and it's arguable how much is recovered. The Nitrogen released still contribute to acid rain. Why go through this messy hassle and guessing game when we already have a perfectly environmentally clean cycle of breaking down H20 into H and O2 via renewables, then recombining the H with free O2 in fuel cells to produce e- and exhaust only water?
Breaking down water into hydrogen and then processing it through a fuel cell is very energy inefficient. Unless we have some breakthrough efficiency improvements, hydrogen fuel will probably never be economically viable on a large scale.
I hear this argument all the time, and asside from being unfounded, it makes absolutely no sense. Even in it's infancy, H2 cost is just a little higher than gasoline at the pump (1).
From someone who works in the sector on a daily basis, H2 production from offshore wind powered electrolosis is (and will continue to be) growing to meet increasing demand.
The energy to perform electrolosys comes from renewables like wind and solar, the efficiency of which (primarilly concerning the fully burdoned CAPEX/OPEX of renewable power plant to shipboard fuel cost - i.e. tnhe "cost at the pump") is certainly competitive with diesel fuel prices when you factor in efficiency gains of fuel cells over diesel engines over the full range of power loading. Not too mention the indirect envoronmental gains cost avoidance engine integrators realize by not having to buy additional pollution abatement systems (e.g. EGRs, Scrubbers, SCRs, etc).
We have to be careful with massive new demand for biofuels. Even small changes to e.g. ethanol policy have caused food shortages (well, higher commodity food prices, but at some level these are equivalent) in the past.
what might make a huge positive difference for the environment would be rolling out policies to help reduce population growth (or the absolute population count) of people such as myself with relatively affluent polluting lifestyles, but we might have to wait until there is mass suffering right here right now due to environment reasons across many countries with political power before there is substantial change.