Yet another Hacker News

The Return of Sail Power: Cargo Ships Are Turning Back to the Wind

113 points gumby 13 hours ago 82 comments

fsckboy 11 hours ago | parent

Growing up as I did in an old seafaring town, quite near Ahab's ports of call, I love the romance of the sea and I listen exclusively to sea chanties.

For low-value and bulk cargo, ships make sense, and modern computer-controlled sail trim and wind energy harvesting probably makes a great case. But high value cargo is largely today shipped by air. Nvidia wants money for its chips ASAP, too valuable to sit around non productively while being steamered. Maybe with surplus wind energy they could mine bitcoin while en route?

A sort of related topic, about 20 years ago during peak farm-to-table "buy local" fashion, the NY Times pointed out that lamb shipped from New Zealand (where is that on a map, I can't find it?) to New York City arrives with a lower carbon footprint than lamb delivered by trucks from nearby upstate NY farms, such are the economies of scale in shipping.

But now, blow me down me hearties, I look forward to dining on New Zealand lamb carried to my door by the winds of fortune!

upboundspiral 10 hours ago | parent

If there was a direct and maintained electric train route + stronger food regulation in the US you could dine on fresh local produce with a lower carbon footprint.

International cooperation and trade is great, but in the US specifically the economic behemoths have used globalization to paper over the real problems that we face at home (we haven't truly invested in infrastructure in a long time, the meat we produce is rejected on health standards abroad, etc). I doubt the smokescreen will last much longer with Trump et al blowing up international agreements.

fsckboy 9 hours ago | parent

NYers dine on fresh local produce without subsidies or government interference.

Farm fresh vegetable produce is perishable and goes from fresh to wilted/rotten very quickly. It is in the capitalist interest with no regulation to move fresh produce as quickly as possible to the supermarkets and onto the shelves. Every day trucks bring fresh produce from NJ and LI and upstate NY into the city and it immediately goes onto the shelves for sale. No communist system could do it as well.

Produce is an extremely profitable segment of supermarket sales. The markups are very low (no communist could compete) but the turnover is very quick. While a can of beans might sit there a few weeks, customers love fresh produce. So hypothetically, they could make a 0.5% markup (you going to take public transit to NJ to buy produce a half a point cheaper?), but that's every week, so in a year it's a healthy 25% markup for the supermarket's annual investment. I made up the numbers to explain the concept, but that in a nutshell is supermarket economics. Maybe they mark up 2% and the annualized profit is 100%. Tiny margin, healthy profit, point made. Very efficient, happy customers, happy supermarkets.

Trucks bring produce farm to table, maybe a distribution stop. Trains are for bulk stuff and not route flexible, so it's not clear they contribute any advantage to the mix, but I love me trains too.

And it's not just NYer's, that's just an urban extreme example, every supermarket chain the the country operates like this.

derektank 8 hours ago | parent

>If there was a direct and maintained electric train route

What do you mean by this? Most US freight trains are already diesel electric. German freight uses overhead electric wires on most of the shared passenger rail network, which is great, but doesn’t make it any easier or faster to deliver freight to consumers. Are you thinking of high speed rail? Bullet and maglev trains aren’t used to deliver freight anywhere globally that I’m aware of.

Gud 7 hours ago | parent

Diesel... electric. Now remove the word diesel.

It reduces the carbon footprint considerably if you don't have to fill up your trains with carbon.

yreg 6 hours ago | parent

No, you don't need maglev to compete with a ship sailing from NZ on speed.

pbmonster 4 hours ago | parent

But you would need maglev if you wanted to compete on energy per ton of cargo per mile. Ships are several times more efficient than classic trains.

yreg 3 hours ago | parent

NZ is also several times farther.

mschuster91 5 hours ago | parent

Look around on youtube how dilapidated a lot of US freight rail is.

I'm German, so I'm well used to dishing out on our railways, but at least our rails don't look like spaghetti that have been way overcooked and can only safely be driven at walking speed. And the amount of black smoke the locomotives emit when spinning up their old engines... wouldn't pass any emissions inspections here in Germany.

weberer 2 hours ago | parent

American diesel emission standards are famously more strict than Germany's. That's the whole reason why diesel cars aren't as common in the USA, and why Volkswagen had to cheat to pass emissions tests.

mschuster91 2 hours ago | parent

Railways have emissions standards different from road vehicles. And VW cheated because they couldn't pass European regulations, the thing is that the big lawsuit took place in the US because US courts allow far bigger monetary amounts.

bluGill 2 hours ago | parent

US rail is in great shape. You are confusing lines that are nearly abandoned and will be soon but they can take a couple more trips for the state of US rail. US rail is in great shape overall, and very well maintained.

YouTube is not an unbiased source of information, please find a better source before making claims.

bell-cot 7 hours ago | parent

I'd first question whether the NY Times' accounting included the carbon footprint within NZ, where the lambs are probably raised far from the shipping piers. Then you've got the infrastructure and power requirements for freezing for the long ocean voyage. Then...

After that, I'd question local sheep farmers about how suitable upstate NY is for raising lambs, compared to NZ. And about the regulatory and business environment they face. Agriculture in the US is a hellish mess, and the great majority of its problems are caused by neither its associated carbon emissions nor by underinvesting in transportation infrastructure.

internet_points 6 hours ago | parent

Ooh what's your favourite sea shanty, or chanty gang?

bombcar 3 hours ago | parent

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BgpBZB3Apno seems appropriate somehow

3eb7988a1663 11 hours ago | parent

If anyone else was confused why those pictures were of giant tubes and not canvas sails, you are not alone. Apparently those are some version of "Suction Sails". The vendor's website has a graphic that explains it, though it was fighting my ability to scroll.

https://bound4blue.com/esail/

jstanley 11 hours ago | parent

Possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship ?

SamBam 11 hours ago | parent

Most of the sails in the article seemed to be rotor sails, but the suction sail mentioned by GP seems to be a type of turbosail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbosail

m463 10 hours ago | parent

interesting that the rotor sail principle can be used with planes too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect#In_aviation

(can't help but think "tilt rotor" of a different kind)

dylan604 10 hours ago | parent

The rending of the Maersk ship really strains the concept. If the containers are stacked that high, would it not block the wind going to the solitary sail?

maxerickson 10 hours ago | parent

The force is perpendicular to the sail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flettner_rotor

scamdrill 9 hours ago | parent

Same principal that causes a soccer ball to bend. The magnus effect.

jimnotgym 7 hours ago | parent

That is not how I read the article you linked. It says the force is perpendicular to the long axis AND airflow. And later it says the force is perpendicular to the wind.

So I am reasoning with a side wind 'on the beam' you get a force pusing forward. Which incidentally is a traditional rigs best point of sail. This doesn't appear to be the full story, since the boat in the photograph is healed over in the same way as the gaff rigged sailboat next to it, so there appears to be some sideways force too. Laterall resistance of the hull in the water will force that into a resultant force that is mostly forwards (but with some leeway) I presume.

I am supossing that when running before the wind this means the force is to one or other sides of the ships axis (depending on the rotation). The resistance of the hull to lateral motion forces this again into forward motion. But the sail is indeed being obstructed by the containers and I believe the force will therefore be diminished as per the OP, since the wind has led sail area to act on.

I am inferring all this since the wiki is light on detail.

I would be concerned that one cannot reef this kind of sail. In a storm it is going to heel the boat more, change its motion through the waves, perhaps press the bow down. Bearing in mind that on a traditional square rigger, one would lower the top part of the mast before a storm to reduce windage.

I feel a better reference would be an aid... but I'm with the op, at some points of sail the containers are in the way

maxerickson 26 minutes ago | parent

I attempted to say perpendicular to the wind and failed.

stackghost 9 hours ago | parent

There are two visually similar sails. Some are rotating tubes that generate lift via the Magnus effect and even though they create low pressure zones, those are not “suction sails”, strictly speaking.

A suction sail is a more or less conventional airfoil that houses an axial compressor to basically suck in air which causes the boundary layer to stay attached which generates lift via the same mechanisms as an aircraft wing.

From a distance and to a casual observer they’re pretty similar.

3eb7988a1663 9 hours ago | parent

The article did mention suction sails for the Maersk Tankers, but it does seem like the bulk of the article was about the rotating tubes.

WalterBright 10 hours ago | parent

This seems to happen once every 20 years.

sien 10 hours ago | parent

Yep. They alternate decades with the 'Airships are returning for cargo' groups.

walrus01 10 hours ago | parent

To date, they've achieved a very high level of advancement in making a new airship that looks like a butt. Sir Mixalot would be proud.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=airship+t...

iAMkenough 9 hours ago | parent

Soon we’ll need to provide proof-of-age just to look up at the sky.

Cthulhu_ 7 hours ago | parent

I feel like I've seen that same thing for 20, 30 years now, lol

lukeify 9 hours ago | parent

I'd be down for a future of awesome looking ships and giant zeppelins gracing the sky.

WalterBright 7 hours ago | parent

I'd love to fly in a Zeppelin, too, but the problem is they are very vulnerable to the weather.

ThrustVectoring 6 hours ago | parent

AIUI the problem is the economics are pretty unfavorable for smaller-scale prototypes due to square-cube issues (drag and thus fuel costs is proportional to cross-sectional area, lift and thus cargo capacity is proportional to volume). You'd need a very big airship to get a competitive economic niche between sea and traditional air freight, where you're faster and more flexible than sea transport and cheaper than traditional air freight.

Figs 6 hours ago | parent

Hmm. Couldn't you put solar panels on top for power (and fly above the clouds) + use some sort of sail when wind is available? It might be really slow, but if you can get the systems to be fully autonomous (no people needed to pilot it) and need very little / no fuel... then couldn't it become a rather cheap way to ship things that aren't urgent?

ThrustVectoring 2 hours ago | parent

Solar panels don't have good enough power to weight ratios and aren't likely to contribute effectively.

As far as sails go, you need a second medium to act as a keel, otherwise it's impossible to get a net push in any direction other than downwind.

econ 1 hour ago | parent

There is another niche if you make them several miles long and width. Then can use more conventional construction materials like a concrete shell. (We are of course not ready for that)

GolfPopper 6 hours ago | parent

A very recent xkcd touched on this:

https://xkcd.com/3298/

mschuster91 5 hours ago | parent

About the same frequency the US starts a major war or oil prices skyrocket for someone else's war. 20-ish years ago was the Iraq 2 war. 20-ish years before that was Iraq 1. Now it's the unholy combination of Ukraine beating Russia's refineries and US/Israel striking Iran.

And the higher oil prices go, the more people are interested in saving oil.

TeMPOraL 2 hours ago | parent

You mean once every 20 months. I've seen this article several times already. I first learned about Flettners from one - fascinating devices, btw. - which is why I notice when it resurfaces again, every year or two.

walrus01 10 hours ago | parent

The most recent example, it's somewhat down the page at the gcaptain URL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliner_Origin

lastofthemojito 1 hour ago | parent

You can also sail on the Neoliner Origin as a passenger if you want to get a closer look: https://www.sailcoop.fr/en/our-crossings/north-america/

tomkarho 8 hours ago | parent

Can we bring zeppelins back next for air?

calmbonsai 7 hours ago | parent

No, they’re really not.

Turns out, sail-power scales sublinearly and, shocker, the wind isn’t a reliable source of power for the logistics demands of today’s supply chains.

We’re never going back to wind, but we will be de-carbonizing shipping either with ammonia combustion, fuel cells, or both.

nradov 7 hours ago | parent

Longer term I think we'll also use synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels manufactured through the Fischer–Tropsch process. People have proposed bringing back nuclear powered merchant ships but that's a non-starter for cost and security reasons. We can keep the nuclear plants safely on land and use them to make carbon-neutral fuel.

mschuster91 5 hours ago | parent

That is insanely inefficient however. It only makes sense for transoceanic air travel, probably supplanted by synthfuel from biomass, but in the long term we will see ships powered by batteries. Far far more efficient.

nradov 35 minutes ago | parent

Batteries are already being used for ferries but they're too large and heavy for transoceanic merchant ships. I doubt that operators will be willing to make more frequent port calls just to recharge.

mschuster91 7 minutes ago | parent

... at the moment. We might find ourselves with containers full of batteries being exchanged on sea by feeder ships. Doesn't help across the real oceans, but works along coastal routes (which Asia-Europe definitely is).

rendaw 7 hours ago | parent

Couldn't they use sails plus that? Are these companies advocating for just sails, or sails plus other stuff?

Cthulhu_ 7 hours ago | parent

Sails plus the regular engines, for a % in fuel reduction that adds up at scale.

scott_w 6 hours ago | parent

That’s exactly what they’re doing to reduce fuel usage by up to 6%.

orwin 5 hours ago | parent

I think it's up to 24% for rotor sails,no?

Razengan 6 hours ago | parent

How about the equivalent of an space elevator turned 90°:

Can we built giant conveyer belts across the ocean?

forcedtolinux 6 hours ago | parent

transpacific zipline (don't tell musk he might start a company)

internet_points 6 hours ago | parent

s/start/buy

ftfy

usrusr 5 hours ago | parent

Get rich quick scheme with the catch that you'll have to deal with Musk?

Guess I'll pass

robbomacrae 6 hours ago | parent

Ships are ~5x more efficient than trains so unlikely a good trade off. It would have to be a maglev to beat shipping.

pholypilz 3 hours ago | parent

Aren't the wind turbines & solar parks fucking up our landscapes ugly enough you dolt?

CorvusCrypto 6 hours ago | parent

Agree that it's not going to be a binary shift. The tech does look promising for at least rotor sails, but that's an improvement which also demands use of traditional powerplants to drive the rotors ofc. Still worth investigating imo considering the shipping industry is the area of the world that still contributes highest to carbon output and is sort of an "untouchable" industry due to criticality. If cheap enough this could help while we wait for e.g. "greener" fuel or other things to develop. But yeah, to underscore further, not like shipping will look like my sailing yacht any time soon.

gehsty 5 hours ago | parent

I think it’s clear that they are not turning back to use them exclusively, but clearly are ‘turning back’ in an additive way.

Eg putting these things on ammonia powered vessel will reduce the amount of fuel needed, which is probably a net benefit.

rob74 5 hours ago | parent

If you had bothered to at least skim TFA, this is addressed in the third paragraph:

> The idea is not to turn modern cargo ships back into sailing vessels. Instead, these systems are designed to work alongside conventional engines, using the wind to reduce fuel consumption whenever conditions allow.

askvictor 2 hours ago | parent

News articles to this effect have been popping up occasionally for the past 20 years at least. So the economics don't seem to stack up. At least not yet; but if oil gets a bit dearer...

vintermann 5 hours ago | parent

We're not going "back" to wind, but there are vessels with modern sails already deployed to save a couple of % fuel costs. There were 9 in 2020 and are 64 now, according to Sintef. Of course kinks are still getting ironed out, but it seems likely it will continue to grow.

defrost 5 hours ago | parent

And yet:

  Klaveness Combination Carriers (KCC) has launched a brand-new vessel that aims to use wind technology that the company believes will not just reduce emissions, but also improve fuel efficiency on its voyages between China and Australia.

  Equipped with the first wind-assisted propulsion system in KCC’s fleet and a range of advanced energy efficiency technologies, MV Baltazar was officially launched at Fremantle Port this week

  .. According to the company, due to the ship’s trading area, size and advanced energy efficiency measures including suction sails, MV Baltazar has the lowest carbon footprint of any vessel in these trades.

~ (September 16, 2026) https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/high-s...

> de-carbonizing shipping either with ammonia combustion, fuel cells, or both.

Or methanol:

  Methanol is emerging as one of the most practical low-greenhouse gas (GHG) fuels for deep-sea shipping.

* https://methanol.org/what-fuels-shipping

* https://www.dnv.com/maritime/publications/methanol-fuel-in-s...

* https://www.lr.org/en/knowledge/research/fuel-for-thought/me...

GJim 5 hours ago | parent

> methanol

Currently made from crude oil in a CO2 emitting process from a finite fossil fuel resource.

And yes, whilst methanol can be distilled from wood/crops (a more expensive process), this simply cannot scale, especially if humanity wishes to eat...... You do realise a large container ship is 1/4 mile long and carries north of 18,000 TEU containers; that's 9000 lorries worth. They are big.

defrost 3 hours ago | parent

> Currently made from crude oil ..

Much of it is, just like ammonia (see comment I responded to) but green methanol ships have been trialled using output from pilot green hydrogen plants.

> You do realise a large container ship is 1/4 mile long

People still use miles? Wow. I'm more familiar with the shipping of a billion tonne of iron ore per annum from the NW Australian coastline in bulk carrier ships but please, do blather on in that condescending tone.

GJim 2 hours ago | parent

> green hydrogen plants.

Splitting fresh water (salt water is a non-starter) for hydrogen is a rather energy inefficient and expensive process.

> People still use miles?

In maritime world, yes we do; nautical and statute.

> do blather on in that condescending tone.

I do appear to have touched a nerve old sport.

TeMPOraL 3 hours ago | parent

I think news publishing has recurring schedule for topics for filler articles, and this is just the regularly scheduled appearance of Flettner rotors.

I saw the headline, and immediately knew what it is. Always the same: headline implying sail power is back, body correcting that it's about minor fuel savings, and that some shipping companies are planning to install rotors on their fleet.

cucumber3732842 2 hours ago | parent

Somewhere in a cube farm that hasn't been updated since the 90s:

"This month's analytics report indicates our college educated white collar employed left leaning traffic to our properties is down over the same month last year"

"Don't worry about it, I'm having AI re-write all the green tech articles from 2005-15, it'll be back by November"

dinfinity 1 hour ago | parent

"The International Windship Association says more than 100 large merchant ships are now equipped with modern wind propulsion systems, representing more than 5 million deadweight tons of carrying capacity."

It's not much, but it's more than just planned stuff. I do generally agree with your sentiment.

draven 5 hours ago | parent

Why is every paragraph in this article at most 2 sentences long, with most of them being a single sentence?

fransje26 4 hours ago | parent

Gotta adapt to the decreasing attention span economy.

usrusr 4 hours ago | parent

Skysails tried, now they appear to have fully pivoted to land based power generation.

My dream future would see the oceans swarming with kite driven robotic boats that just cruise around under kite power, harvesting electricity with hydrogenerators as they go, feeding that power into a hydrolyser slowly filling some hydrogen storage unit that they drop off for sale at a port when full.

acidburnNSA 3 hours ago | parent

59 different companies including mine responded to MARAD's recent RFI on nuclear powered merchant ships. Many people are realizing that wind, hydrogen, ammonia, etc are falling short for global scale shipping.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/07/2026-09...

bgnn 9 minutes ago | parent

TBH this makes the most sense. Nuclear for large scale shipping + battery electric or hydrogen for smaller distances, rivers etc.

ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago | parent

We need to start fitting nuclear reactors on cargo ships.

The technology is proven and reliable. Not to mention no emissions.

lxgr 2 hours ago | parent

If you think about this for a minute, maybe you'll be able to form a theory for why this is already very common for military vessels, but not so much for unarmed civilian ones...

ExoticPearTree 1 hour ago | parent

Icebreakers are not military vessels and they have nuclear reactors.

Probably initial cost is the reason this did not become something more common.

akazantsev 1 hour ago | parent

> We need to start fitting nuclear reactors on cargo ships.

That's a great idea, and it's timely too. Right now, cargo ships are being attacked in many parts of the world.

21asdffdsa12 2 hours ago | parent

Wouldn't it make more sense to store windpower at sea and transfer the resulting fuel to passing by ships?

ralphhughes 1 hour ago | parent

I've also thought this. There are loads of offshore wind farms in the North Sea and I bet the cost per kWh at the offshore substation is a fraction of the cost compared to the same electricity once stepped up for transmission through the undersea cables to the shore, possibly curtailed due to grid congestion and then transmitted still further to the urban load centers.

If only there was a reliable, mature process to turn air\seawater plus energy at the windfarm into a synthetic fuel (ammonia or methanol maybe?) that could be then stored and used to refuel green shipping that burned no bunker fuel or diesel?

alexpotato 1 hour ago | parent

Sat next to a fusion researcher once on a commuter train.

This particular line struck me: "When oil prices go up, so does money for fusion research"

Feels the same for sail and cargo ships.