The eWolf will begin operating this spring at the Port of San Diego, marking an important early step toward slashing diesel pollution from America's ports.
Its a step in the right direction. I can’t help but wonder if ports should be moving away from tugboats entirely though. They weren’t strictly necessary for thousands of years of ocean shipping. Why do we need powered ships at all? Is it because we need container shipping? Because that might just be a feature of the highly globalized fossil fuel era.
Ships are a lot bigger and we expect a lot more reliability from them than we did in the wind-only era. This makes tugs necessary to enable safe maneuvering in harbor.
Bigger and containerization have the effect of making shipping cheaper on a per-unit basis, which is why they’re used.
The Baltimore bridge collapse could’ve been prevented if there had been a tug helping maneuver the ship after it had lost power. There’s probably a higher demand for them now and having an electric option should be good.
Its a step in the right direction. I can’t help but wonder if ports should be moving away from tugboats entirely though. They weren’t strictly necessary for thousands of years of ocean shipping. Why do we need powered ships at all? Is it because we need container shipping? Because that might just be a feature of the highly globalized fossil fuel era.
Ships are a lot bigger and we expect a lot more reliability from them than we did in the wind-only era. This makes tugs necessary to enable safe maneuvering in harbor.
Bigger and containerization have the effect of making shipping cheaper on a per-unit basis, which is why they’re used.
The Baltimore bridge collapse could’ve been prevented if there had been a tug helping maneuver the ship after it had lost power. There’s probably a higher demand for them now and having an electric option should be good.