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Sail Freight Revival: Methods Of Calculating Fleet, Labor, And Cargo Needs For Supplying Cities By Sail
Abstract and Figures
Sail Freight has slowly worked its way into the realm of sustainability
discourse as a way of reducing emissions from transportation, providing
logistical solutions using the emissions free power of the wind and
technologies proven effective for over 5000 years. This attitude toward Sail
Freight and transportation in general has some merits, but none of these
discussions seem to have examined the issue of readopting sail freight at
scale. This paper proposes methods of understanding this issue of scale by
calculating the needs of a city for food. Using foodshed analysis to calculate
necessary fleet capacities therefrom, as well as the labor needed to support
this fleet, a model is provided for the New York Metro Area. The capacity for
building this fleet and training sailors with current sail freight infrastructure
and operations is then examined, with recommendations and analysis for
addressing these challenges over the coming decades.
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Supplementary resources (2)
... I am neither engineer, naval architect, economist, nor meteorologist: I study scale in sustainable technologies, compared to climate based resource and time constraints. My thesis examined the time needed to build a fleet and train crew to supply food to cities under sail (Woods, 2021). ...
... The secondary objective is to look at the transport system as an integrated whole, with an eye to replacing other modes of transportation using the less resource intensive mode of maritime transport with wind propulsion. This historic model can be used to reduce the number of trucks and trains required for transportation systems, as well as the resource intensive investments involved in the infrastructure these vehicles need to operate (Woods, 2021). The displacement of trucks and trains using small windjammers can reduce carbon on legs of a cargo's journey, while reopening many small ports to commerce and reducing noise and air pollution. ...
... China (49), S. Korea (20), Japan (10) Lead 86,960,000 Australia (40), China (18), Russia (11) Silver 570,000 Peru (21), Australia (15), Poland (15) Zinc 200,000,000 Australia (32), China (19), Peru (13) Cobalt 7,162,000 Congo (47), Australia (15), Cuba (7) Lithium 14,000,000 Chile (54), China (23), Argentina (14) Manganese 620,000,000 S. Africa (32), Ukraine (23) Due to the limited remaining reserves of extractable oil and gas, as well as their carbon intensity, including fossil fuels under the heading of strategic resources becomes critically important (Hirsch, 2005;Hughes, 2021). Alternative fuels and shore power will be in short supply and more important for use in shoreside applications such as agriculture and transport, and should be written off as unavailable for maritime transport (Woods, 2021). ...
Sustainability in shipbuilding and the maritime economy is often discussed on a technologies basis, mostly around the avoidance of fossil fuels. In the case of a strictly technological analysis, this is acceptable. This is a poor lens for viewing sustainability at scale, however, as it does not deal with the potential effects of applying that technology to potentially hundreds of thousands of vessels worldwide. A better lens is from the perspective of Strategic Materials and Resources for the renewable energy transition. The idea of prioritizing the use of strategic materials and resources in critical roles such as land-based grid decarbonization instead of areas where substitutes exist is a primarily military viewpoint, but useful nonetheless. As there is a finite time and pool of critical resources available for the global energy transition to avoid catastrophic failures of world climate systems, this military model is worth considering. In the maritime field, this means designing ships and shipping systems to avoid or minimize the use of solar panels, lithium batteries, fossil fuels, grid power, copper, and a long list of other materials in propulsion and energy systems, in favor of replacements which use less-or non-critical materials and resources. Because of the restricted carbon budget remaining in the years to 2050, petroleum is also a critical resource, which must be limited and conserved at scale. The results of such a lens for ship design favors wind propulsion, restrictive engine/energy use strategies, minimized battery and solar energy systems, and immediate use of retrofits to increase fuel efficiency of the existing fleet. By looking not at isolated technologies, but at the resource economics and interlocking challenges ahead of us, a movement toward truly sustainable fleets can begin to take shape. Historic models can point the way toward a modern ethic of critical resource conservation.
... The speed of trains combined with the relative efficiency and ability to access city centres is of great benefit. Shipping wins out for the very large deliveries and those that can use the proximity of the rivers and canals to certain resources such as food shipping (Woods 2021). ...
In 2020 we, the arts-collective Time's Up, commenced a small pilot program for food deliveries on the Danube river in Austria. While the pilot had to be suspended for various reasons, we find it valuable to talk about our results; what we learnt, what we experienced, the images that arose. The pilot does not exist in isolation, but is part of a larger imagination and development of clean transport. By clean we mean free of fossil fuel usage. The Danube is one of the living connections of central and eastern Europe, and has been a cargo carrying avenue for centuries. Ocean going vessels were able to reach Belgrade from the Black Sea. The Danube upriver of Belgrade is classed as "mountainous" due to its flow speed, traditionally only paddled or poled vessels could stem the flow; most vessels were one way downstream deliveries of wood, salt and other basics. Since the regulation of the Danube and the creation of multiple dams and locks, the river is, to a certain degree, "tamed." In the slow flowing sections behind dams, there are even some recreational sailors. Transport is nevertheless almost entirely in the hands of large motorised barges. The river is also blessed with an extensive floodplain, filled with vibrant farms. Close to Linz, there is a local organic food supplier who uses, for the last mile deliveries, cargo bikes. As an experiment, we looked at what it would mean to replace the road section from the upriver floodplains into the urban area of Linz with small sail cargo deliveries. We invested time and effort in collaboration with various partners to develop the logistics of deliveries, ordering and sorting, cooling, movement, loading and unloading. In the end, the lack of a verifiable refrigeration system was deemed an insurmountable challenge for food safety. We were left with plans and analyses, experiments and test runs but no actual data. The project was, to use Foucault's term, somewhat too Heterotopic to be realisable, but remained a sort of parallel or post-neoliberal economic order along the lines of J.K Gibson-Graham, a prefiguration of a possible, low carbon future, an example of less efficiency effectiveness. In this report we would like to share the insights and experiences, and contextualise the project in terms of futures thinking, heterodox economics, arts practices and the sail cargo community.
... Each bioregion has distinct opportunities and strengths, resources and historical detail. We only ask questions, and recommend that readers who are interested can delve into specific developments of scenario reactions for details (Willner 2021) (Woods 2021) . ...
Sail Freight has a distinct role to play in any Energy Security or Energy Independence consideration as fossil fuels become scarcer and geopolitical tensions further increase energy prices. The following scenarios are designed as thought experiments for the conference's participants along with those engaged in other coastal transport not involving wind propulsion. Other sail freight projects would do well to answer the same questions early and o en for use in their own marketing and strategic planning efforts.
A practical handbook for a general audience on Sail Freight oprtations, including Vessel Selection, Crew, Cargo Handling, Port Operations, and more details. Designed as a compilation of practical knowledge from the experience of the Sail Freight Revival thus far and historic sources, the Sail Freight Handbook is not so much academic as the bridge between research and real work.
Sail Freight is only a meaningful change in economic or carbon emissions terms if it achieves statistical significance in trade volume. The key to expanding a coastal and inland "Mosquito Fleet" is spreading knowledge, building infrastructure, and inspiring people to simply do something. This can be facilitated and encouraged through engagement with a wide variety of citizens with a wide variety of motivations; ecological, political, financial, or otherwise. Creating the resources and removing barriers to starting a sail freight business and make small ports better suited to sail freight operations can be organized and accelerated using Anarcho-Communist methods such as open-source plans, open access publishing, affinity activism, mutual aid, and the creative commons.
In the discussion of sail freight worldwide, little analysis exists to illuminate the effects of sail freight vessels engaged in shipping along rivers. Even less of the literature provides meaningful, in-depth insight into the operations of such vessels. The 64-ft (19.5 m) schooner Apollonia, a small general cargo vessel and the only active, operational sail freighter in the United States, operates on the Hudson River and in New York Harbor. The ship's logs and other data from 2021, the Apollonia's first sail freight season, are examined here to gauge the performance of small sail freighters on river trade routes. The available data shows sail freight has a strong advantage over comparable trucking in fuel use per Ton-Mile.
Government policies during the COVID-19 pandemic have drastically altered patterns of energy demand around the world. Many international borders were closed and populations were confined to their homes, which reduced transport and changed consumption patterns. Here we compile government policies and activity data to estimate the decrease in CO2 emissions during forced confinements. Daily global CO2 emissions decreased by –17% (–11 to –25% for ±1σ) by early April 2020 compared with the mean 2019 levels, just under half from changes in surface transport. At their peak, emissions in individual countries decreased by –26% on average. The impact on 2020 annual emissions depends on the duration of the confinement, with a low estimate of –4% (–2 to –7%) if prepandemic conditions return by mid-June, and a high estimate of –7% (–3 to –13%) if some restrictions remain worldwide until the end of 2020. Government actions and economic incentives postcrisis will likely influence the global CO2 emissions path for decades. COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have altered global energy demands. Using government confinement policies and activity data, daily CO2 emissions have decreased by ~17% to early April 2020 against 2019 levels; annual emissions could be down by 7% (4%) if normality returns by year end (mid-June).
The value of land-use strategies that increase food production while conserving biodiversity is widely recognized. Many indigenous agroecosystems are productive, adaptive and ecologically principled, but are largely overlooked by planning in terms of their potential to meet current and future food needs. We developed spatial distribution models of indigenous agroecosystems in Hawai‘i to identify their potential past distribution, productive and carrying capacities, and future potential under current land-use and mild-to-severe future climate scenarios. Our results suggest that Hawaiʻi’s traditional agroecosystems could have had production levels comparable to consumption today. Carrying capacity estimates support hypotheses of large pre-colonial Hawaiian populations (>800,000). Urban development has reduced (−13%) traditional agroecosystems but 71% remain agriculturally zoned. Projected effects of three future climate scenarios vary from no change in potential production to decreases of 19% in the driest and warmest end-of-century scenario. This study highlights the food-producing potential of indigenous agriculture even under land-use and climate changes, and the value of their restoration into the future. © 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
This article traces the history and career of one of the last remaining Australian-built coastal trading ketches.
The shipping industry needs to decarbonize over the coming decades, but there are competing visions about how that will happen. While major shipping companies are looking to potential new fuels, including ammonia, other disruptors are already shipping small quantities of boutique goods, emission free, on sailboats harnessing the power of the wind. They are a reminder that all global trade used to travel by sail. Can wind propel us back to the future? There is a role for wind power in shipping as both a primary means of propulsion and a way to provide wind assistance to reduce a vessel’s fuel use. This article examines the possibilities and challenges for wind‐based sea transport.
A high and sustainable quality of life is a central goal for humanity. Our current socio-ecological regime and its set of interconnected worldviews, institutions, and technologies all support the goal of unlimited growth of material production and consumption as a proxy for quality of life. However, abundant evidence shows that, beyond a certain threshold, further material growth no longer significantly contributes to improvement in quality of life. Not only does further material growth not meet humanity's central goal, there is mounting evidence that it creates significant roadblocks to sustainability through increasing resource constraints (i.e., peak oil, water limitations) and sink constraints (i.e., climate disruption). Overcoming these roadblocks and creating a sustainable and desirable future will require an integrated, systems level redesign of our socio-ecological regime focused explicitly and directly on the goal of sustainable quality of life rather than the proxy of unlimited material growth. This transition, like all cultural transitions, will occur through an evolutionary process, but one that we, to a certain extent, can control and direct. We suggest an integrated set of worldviews, institutions, and technologies to stimulate and seed this evolutionary redesign of the current socio-ecological regime to achieve global sustainability.
Droves of people have turned to local food as a way to retreat from our broken industrial food system. From rural outposts to city streets, they are sowing, growing, selling, and eating food produced close to home—and they are crying out for agricultural reform. All this has made “local food” into everything from a movement buzzword to the newest darling of food trendsters.
But now it’s time to take the conversation to the next level. That’s exactly what Philip Ackerman-Leist does in Rebuilding the Foodshed, in which he refocuses the local-food lens on the broad issue of rebuilding regional food systems that can replace the destructive aspects of industrial agriculture, meet food demands affordably and sustainably, and be resilient enough to endure potentially rough times ahead.
Changing our foodscapes raises a host of questions. How far away is local? How do you decide the size and geography of a regional foodshed? How do you tackle tough issues that plague food systems large and small—issues like inefficient transportation, high energy demands, and rampant food waste? How do you grow what you need with minimum environmental impact? And how do you create a foodshed that’s resilient enough if fuel grows scarce, weather gets more severe, and traditional supply chains are hampered?
Showcasing some of the most promising, replicable models for growing, processing, and distributing sustainably grown food, this book points the reader toward the next stages of the food revolution. It also covers the full landscape of the burgeoning local-food movement, from rural to suburban to urban, and from backyard gardens to large-scale food enterprises.
Despite substantial focus on sustainability issues in both science and politics, humanity remains on largely unsustainable development trajectories. Partly, this is due to the failure of sustainability science to engage with the root causes of unsustainability. Drawing on ideas by Donella Meadows, we argue that many sustainability interventions target highly tangible, but essentially weak, leverage points (i.e. using interventions that are easy, but have limited potential for transformational change). Thus, there is an urgent need to focus on less obvious but potentially far more powerful areas of intervention. We propose a research agenda inspired by systems thinking that focuses on transformational ‘sustainability interventions’, centred on three realms of leverage: reconnecting people to nature, restructuring institutions and rethinking how knowledge is created and used in pursuit of sustainability. The notion of leverage points has the potential to act as a boundary object for genuinely transformational sustainability science.
Even as Americans lament there being too much globalization, they are in fact oil the verge of facing too little. Slower, costlier, and less certain transportation will not put an end to international trade, but the golden age of globalization is over.