Ecoliners

Now that I have opened myself up to seeing the constraints in the sustainability of our current way of life the most amazing and interesting items find their way to my attention.

This time it concerned an article about three guys that asked themselves why sea freight is not transported by sailing ships anymore these days. The obvious answer is of course because we invented the engine. But engines need fuel, fuel costs money and creates CO2! For sailing you need wind. Wind is free and CO2-neutral, so why shouldn’t we use ships with sails to transport our freight across the seas?

This sparked their idea for a competitive hybrid freight ship, the ecoliner. The research showed that using ecoliners has several advantages. It is estimated that by also using wind the use of fuel can be reduced with 50 to 90 percent. This creates not only enormous cost savings, but also a considerable reduction in CO2-emissions.

To be able to promote the idea of hybrid freight transport over sea they build a freight sail ship called the Tres Hombres. With this ship they have been successfully sailing freight across the oceans for a year and a half now.

As they fully expect that the ecoliner will be able to compete with regular freight transport over sea, even without subsidies, they are currently looking for investors in their project. Within three years they hope to have the first real ecoliner in operation. Personally I hope they are able to do that sooner!