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Comment by teachrdan | Hacker News Reader

Container ships are more efficient than trucks when measuring CO2 emissions, not so much by other emissions. The problem is that they use high sulfur "bunker oil" fuel. At least with trucks there is a clear path to electrification via renewable means; I don't know that there's a similar path for electrifying container ships due to the logistics involved.

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

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It's worth electrifying truck transport because truck engines have to be reasonably compact and trucks generally don't go far from the electrical grid so can recharge whenever necessary (and possibly in future while driving).

For a container ship this is inverted, so I'd expect CO2-neutral shipping to use minimally-processed biofuel in a turbine power plant. Or nuclear, of course.

It’s worth moving back to trains. trucking took over partly because it removed the infrastructure problem from the truck company. Which left it to governments to (not in some cases) maintain. trains are way more predictable too.

Sounds like removing trucks in the logistics chain as much as possible is the better option then? The trucks' parts and/or fuel (or crude) is also getting shipped using bunker oil fuel.

trucks do not replace container ships, bananas are boarded on ships at tropical countries and delivered to ports worldwide and then trucked to in-land warehouses.

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