It is surprisingly difficult to build a carbon neutral sailing ship. This is even more the case today, because our standards for safety, health, hygiene, comfort, and convenience have changed profoundly since the Age of Sail

The sailing ship is a textbook example of sustainability. For at least 4,000 years, sailing ships have transported passengers and cargo across the world’s seas and oceans without using a single drop of fossil fuels.

If we want to keep travelling and trading globally in a low carbon society, sailing ships are the obvious alternative to container ships, bulk carriers, and airplanes.

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The following submission statement was provided by /u/nastratin:

It is surprisingly difficult to build a carbon neutral sailing ship. This is even more the case today, because our standards for safety, health, hygiene, comfort, and convenience have changed profoundly since the Age of Sail

The sailing ship is a textbook example of sustainability. For at least 4,000 years, sailing ships have transported passengers and cargo across the world’s seas and oceans without using a single drop of fossil fuels.

If we want to keep travelling and trading globally in a low carbon society, sailing ships are the obvious alternative to container ships, bulk carriers, and airplanes.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/112xlwt/how_to_design_a_sailing_ship_for_the_21st_century/j8mogd3/

Supplementary sails on a ship that also has engines = free fuel!

Trying to revive traditional sailing for modern commercial shipping is a dead end. It requires too much manpower (meaning: more than current commercial shipping requires) to operate these, too much maintenance and too much deckspace. Add to that the relative unreliability because the wind is not always blowing of course and it is just not economical viable.

The solution to still use the wind as a power source is to use Rotor Sails (Flettner Rotor) - these can be fully automated, require very little maintenance, have a 8x higher efficency per area and require far less deckspace compared to traditional sails.

However, if we still want our cargo delivered in the same reliable time schedules this will only always be an additional thing to the diesel main engine. It makes not yet sense to have the main engine be electric on such large ships, because the required battery capacity would require an enormous volume of batteries.

As far as sailing goes I think the rotor sail is the future.

While the purists might want no engine, that is kind of unrealistic given the need for a ship like this to maneuver into and out of busy modern ports. I suspect getting becalmed in the middle of a busy shipping channel would not be looked upon favorably by the port authorities. Either hire a tug, or start you own engine (which is difficult if you don't have one) and get out of that container ships way.

This. As with most initiatives, extremism kills good ideas. Plans for carbon-free solutions that are so impractical to implement, or only in a far future, is a dead end. What we need now is to stop theorizing and take immediate measures to reduce the footprint of the current supply chain, mostly by rationalizing global exchanges (many raw materials are sent from A to B to be transformed/packaged only for the final product to be sent back home to be sold). Further decarbonization can also be reached in a reasonable future by retrofitting current ships with rotor sails to save fuel on windy days without impacting regular operations. The rest is science-fiction, and a waste of time and energy.

Sailing ships didn't use a drop of fuel for the last 4,000 years, though their carbon footprint was massive! Entire forests were chopped down to build them. Their damage to nature was just as bad, if not worse

"Obvious" to retards who have never been on a boat.

This was a great read. I found it especially interesting that with a crew of 60 if everyone rowed for 1 hour per day on a rowing machine hooked up to a generator they wouldn’t need any other type of fuel source but the ship owners were worried about the impression that would give.

Did you read the article?

Yes and they fail to mention alternative sailing systems and technologies alltogether and instead follow the example of the Ecoclipper, which does not present a suitable method for mass freight transport using wind powered or -assisted systems. It is a nice showpiece, but a 19th century solution - not a 21st one, as the articles headline promises.

A true 21st century sailing ship solution would offer comparable performance as a standard ship and have significant advantages in efficency, ultra-low maintenance and low cost when compared to a traditional sailing set up.

They end with the note that a (traditional) sailing ship transport economy would require a drastic cut down on the amounts of cargo and/or passengers that get transported, or a massive increase in the number of ships and crew required which is a understandable conclusion - but it is made only under evaluation of the Ecoclipper (and similar) example which represents obsolete technology.

With actual current day technology the transport volume can stay the same or even grow - while decreasing costs. Rotor sails could offer lower costs, higher effectivity, lower maintenance and more unobstructed deckspace to add solarpanels and windturbines. With that in mind the conclusion would be much different - namely that wind powered or rather wind- (and sun) assisted shipping while keeping modern requirements for speed, costs, power consumption etc. is totally feasable.

This article seems to be like an argument "Well computers are nice and all, but producing them is really terrible for the environment. Perhaps we should return to calculating by hand on paper and accept that it is slower - but that would be so much more environmental friendly!" Which would be unworldly naive. Humanity never ever downgrades on such things. Instead it finds solutions that offer the same or better performance at lower costs. It will be the same with transport.

Or perhaps you should elaborate what you think I got wrong.

As I am currently at the RINA International sail propulsion conference in London this is a very timely article! Headlines are very much wind assist technology is a young but rapidly growing industry and there a few early start companies aiming to do some radical thinks with sail and hybrid sail/alt fuel systems!