I’ve been projecting this as a core part of my decade-by-decade maritime repowering state of affairs by way of 2100. Personally, all inland transport and two-thirds of temporary sea transport could be completely electrical. The remaining could be biofuels. Hybrid electrical with biofuel mills is a extremely seemingly pattern for all three courses of transport — with ships steaming into and out of ports, and able to load and offload working solely on batteries for higher efficiencies at variable speeds, elimination of port air air air pollution, and low cost of port noise being core benefits.
I discussed this with Elisabet Liljeblad, PhD, Stena Teknik’s sustainability and energy lead, recently as part of a protracted dialog on my Redefining Vitality – Tech podcast (half 1, half 2). Liljeblad’s group does the engineering, design, and technical strategies for Stena Sphere’s maritime enterprise line, a multi-modal group that options ports, ferries, roll-on roll-off freight ships, roll-on roll-off freight and passenger ships, and bulk carriers. I frolicked with the Stena worldwide technical administration group in Glasgow as part of a debate on maritime decarbonization that they’d invited me to participate in, and as I discussed on the time, battery energy density was going to be ample by 2040 to power all of their generally scheduled routes.
