(Bloomberg) -- When it comes to a sincere effort to decarbonize the global economy, the arteries of that network—shipping—will have to be cleaned up. Massive ships weighed down with goods, grain and often fossil fuels are central to a modern world in which consumers want what they want—and right now.
Shipping itself contributes 3% of all global carbon dioxide emissions. The sheer physics of moving that much tonnage across the sea makes alternative sources of power difficult to find. On this episode of the Bloomberg Originals series Momentum, Haslinda Amin discovers how South Korea is emerging as a pivotal force in reshaping maritime transportation, leading the way along with China, Singapore and the UK to a future with more eco-friendly systems that can reduce the amount of fossil fuels required to keep goods moving.
Some 90% of existing shipping still uses heavy fuel oil—or put another way, if shipping were a country, it would be one the top ten national emitters. Technological innovations involve leveraging methanol and ammonia as fuel, though such power systems remain novelties that can’t be easily scaled. Natural gas meanwhile has presented itself as the cleaner alternative to oil, but it too is a fossil fuel, the burning of which spews one of the worst greenhouse gases—methane—into the atmosphere.
There are however other strategies being developed to lessen the climate impact of shipping that aren’t directly related to substitute fuel. On this episode of Momentum, we also meet the engineers finding new and novel ways to smooth the friction between ships and the sea, reducing the amount of fuel they need to burn.
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