Maersk is the world's largest freight shipping company and has around 700 ships sailing around the world. But the total number of transport ships exceeds 50,000 throughout the world, and all of them generate 3% of the world's pollution (equivalent to the pollution generated by Germany).
Recently Maersk has declared that it will put into operation 17 ships that are capable of running on methanol, which does not pollute, and that methanol can be obtained in an ecological way.
It is good news that the company that pollutes the most is involved in profoundly modifying the ships it uses. But it is only a first step, albeit an important one, on the long road ahead.
The advantage of methanol over hydrogen is that it can be handled more easily at room temperature, it does not need to be kept under pressure, etc…, and the problem is that barely 30,000 tons are produced worldwide every year. Only for the needs of the 17 new Maersk ships it is necessary to multiply that figure by 15, and that is not done overnight.
Another advantage is that methanol can be obtained from natural gas and also by ecological means as indicated in the drawing below.
Since the shipping company is not sure if they will be able to get methanol for their 17 new ships, they will have engines that can also run on today's polluting fuels.
It is up to the authorities and governments to take action to "force" these new non-polluting fuels to be used by shipping companies, and this could be achieved relatively easily by applying the appropriate taxes to polluting ships, so that EVERYONE is interested in not polluting.
In the end, almost everything comes down to an economic issue. Today we have the technologies to pollute much less, but if polluting is cheaper for companies, they will continue to do so. And they will only stop doing it when it is less beneficial to them.
The "problem" is: how much are we citizens willing to "pay" to have non-polluting products and services?
For citizens to be willing to pay more for non-polluting products and services, we should be firmly convinced of the enormous problem that lies ahead of us. And today that does not happen.
Almost everyone understands that it would be good not to pollute, but the fact of taking the step to assume that this costs us money, and that therefore we can lose some of the things that we have so cheap today, there is a long way to go.
Companies seek their maximum benefit, and only change when they are forced to. Because the clients change or because the boundary conditions change. And that path today is being very slow.
It's a shame, but it is what it is. We (and our descendants) will pay for it later and much more expensively.
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