Exploring the Cost and Feasibility of Battery-Electric Ships

> The researchers analyzed US-flagged ships less than 1,000 gross tonnage, which includes primarily passenger ships and three types of tugboats.

This is the buried lede. They are excluding basically all cargo shipping.

- Very little of the shipping industry is US-flagged. Most commercial ships sail under flags of convenience such as Panama and Libera, because of their reduced regulations and costs.

- Nobody carries cargo any distance in vessels of less than 1000 gross tons, because that scale would be uneconomical to operate. Modern seagoing cargo ships have about one crew member per 8000 tons of cargo.

A Lithium fire battery in a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific would be a truly unique experience.

Wow, this is a really good paper. Supplementary info is really great too- they get into details down to floating charging port stations as part of the infrastructure. Surprising how much demand is from tugboats. I have questions about how you'd safely hook up 5 MW connections, but it's definitely solvable.

The future of shipping is ammonia. It has, pretty much, all the attributes of fossil fuels but being NH4 it doesn't produce an earth warming byproduct.

I support this idea but I stopped reading when the costs factored included the social costs of CO2 emissions. which I'm sure are important, but shipping operates on the actual cost of fuel and equipment, until CO2 tax is in that aren't we just making up economics?

They're also factoring in the value of the batteries second life, which seems at best, speculative.

ships should be electric, they're filthy to be around with 24/7 diesel generators running even on the quayside. if ship electrification prompted better port facilities of shore side hookup just that would be a win.

You've been sitting at port a week past unloading please move along! Sorry doc command, were still charging, should be on our way in 8 more days.

Ferry service in the Puget Sound (Seattle Area) has suffered due to delays with electric ferries. The state refuses to maintain their existing fleet. Every line has frequent delays, and the international route which was suspended for “a couple years” in 2021 is now delayed until 2030.

The frustration people have with electric isn’t the technology – it’s the dogmatic commitment to technology that isn’t quite ready, based on false promises of it solving climate change .

Energy density of batteries is much lower than that of fossil fuels. Which means that the weight of the ships would increase. In addition to the high price of the batteries, potential risks of electrocution, etc.

There are intermediate options. Moving away from diesel towards natural gas would dramatically reduce emissions (including sulfur emissions), while retaining high energy density.