Peter’s Blog

With rising concerns about carbon dioxide emissions, the first container ship assisted by a giant kite just set sail. However, the real news is that shipping companies are slowing down their boats:

“We’ve saved so much fuel that we added a ship to the route and still saved costs,” said Klaus Heims, press spokesman [for Hapag-Lloyd]. “Why didn’t we do this before?”

Hapag-Lloyd cut their speeds from 23.5 knots to 20 knots and are planning to go down to 16 knots on the Atlantic soon.

I wonder if this will have a subtle and long terms effect on how the global economy works, since ‘just-in-time’ shipping from overseas is so essential to manufacturing these days.