Wallet-Driven Change: The Crazy Idea of a "Sail" Boat

In an earlier post I pointed out that simple wallet-driven economics (i.e. people start to act once it hits them in the wallet) would begin to have bigger and bigger effects on behavior and environmental impact. Well, an article today seems to bear that out. In the container shipping business, fuel is a huge cost. Hermann Klein of Germanischer Lloyd states that "ship efficiency is of paramount importance considering a fuel bill for a big container ship over a 25-year lifespan adds up to nearly $900 million." That's about $3 million a month ($100k a day) so you can see why rising oil prices would spur change.

So they're getting creative. One idea is "smack your forehead" simple: outfit the container ship with a wind-powered device, or "sail."


Inventor Stephan Wrage claims this novel idea can cut 20 percent, or $1,600, from the ship's daily fuel bill. (Never mind the fact that Klein's figure above puts the daily fuel bill at $100k, not $8k... honestly, why is it so hard for journalists to get their numbers straight?!?)

Putting that to the side, Klein goes on to point out another amazingly simple idea: "slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use."

So if you outfitted all container ships with a sail and half of them slowed down (some shipments are urgent, after all), then we could see a combined 30% reduction in fuel usage and C02 emissions. And since the article claims that the world's merchant ships emit 5% of the world's total CO2, these two extremely simple measures, spurred on by wallet-economics, could cut 1.5% of all CO2 production just like that.

Now imagine what will happen when oil hits $200/barrel.