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The Good News Podcast is your thrice weekly reminder that not all news is bad.
Hi, I'm Neil, the host of the good news podcast. This is your source for good news, fun stories and Sonic joy. All of this goodness is coming to you from beautiful Chicago, Illinois. Over the past few years working on the good news podcast, I've seen one idea pop up a couple times, and it just has never felt mature enough to really chalk it up as good news, but I don't really think that's true anymore. I'm talking about pretty much just sales on international shipping mega ships, I want you to picture those gigantic ships full of shipping containers or holds full of grain or some other critical commodity. These are the big ships. And according to recent UN reports, 90% of world trade is transported with ships 90% and the industry accounts for 3% of carbon dioxide emissions. Over the past few years, I've seen some really cool concepts that are pretty old school. Basically just bolting on some new fangled sails onto these giant ships to use a little bit less fuel. I've seen some that are kites that fly out in front of the ship and get pulled along by the wind. Some that involve spinning rotors and science that seems simultaneously really simple and super complex. But for this episode, I want to tell you about the Pyxis ocean and wind wings comparatively speaking, I know these were very complex to make. These seem pretty straightforward. It's a rigid sail that's a little over 120 feet tall. And these were put on the Pyxis ocean, a 750 foot long ship, which can carry up to 81,000 metric tons of food. The company that charters the ship is Cargill may be not a name you see in your kitchen every day, but certainly a company that moves a lot of food every single day, these sales can fold up and down. And when they are up and running, they have a real impact on how much fuel the ship uses. Every day, the Pyxis ocean has just returned from a six month trial voyage with the sales and on average, the ship used 3.3 tons of fuel less each day, literally tons of fuel. And in an ideal situation, it seems like that number could go way up, like using 12 tonnes of fuel less each day. According to cargo. That's an average of 14% fewer greenhouse gas emissions from the ship and the impact increases per sale. And the long term plan would be for these kinds of ships to have three. So you can take these numbers and multiply them by 1.5. If you'd like. It is certainly not zero. We're not talking about electric cargo ships yet. Maybe we will be in the future. But this is a step in the right direction. There are more than 100,000 merchant ships in the world. And if more or most of them had some sort of sail technology on top that could make a real impact on fuel usage and co2 emissions. I will continue to stay on the futuristic sale news beat and maybe in a few years, I'll have even more exciting updates about the future of lower emission global shipping. That's the good news I have for you today. Enjoy the rest of your day.