When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2018, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2018, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
Shipping solar panels overseas is not a significant source of bunker-fuel emissions, and it probably never will be. Complete solar panel modules, without legs, weigh about 10kg per kilowatt: https://www.amazon.com/ECO-WORTHY-10pcs-Watts-Module-System/.... So each TEU of solar panels contains about 2.2 megawatts of generating capacity at 22 tonnes net per TEU. If the world installs 150 gigawatts of new solar capacity in 2018, that's about 70000 TEUs.
The Emma Maersk carries 11000 TEUs on every voyage, so the amount of solar panels that will be installed worldwide in 2018 is about 6 shiploads.
What about the future, when photovoltaic becomes the dominant source of marketed energy? According to the IEO, current total world marketed energy consumption is 20 terawatts (20'000 gigawatts), which would amount to about 90 million TEUs, or 8000 shiploads. Call it 30000 shiploads to account for photovoltaic's low capacity factor, typically in the 20%–30% range (though we can expect that to become more efficient as development moves to more equatorial areas with less clouds).
There are currently about 9000 container ships in operation, so current world marketed energy consumption is about three trips for the world's shipping fleet, in the form of photovoltaic panels.
Total container shipping volume is already about 470 million TEUs per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship#Container_ports
We can presumably expect panels to become smaller and lighter as time goes on, further decreasing the energy needed for shipping, and eventually the proliferation of solar panels will depress the price of energy so low that not even bunker fuel can compete with syngas, at which point the bunker fuel emissions problem will be over.
(Edited to correct order-of-magnitude calculation error.)