This article, contributed to Splash by WinGD, explains why ethanol is a good temporary marine fuel. The WinGD engines were built to run on methanol, but can easily be adapted to burn ethanol. And ethanol is readily available commercially, especially in Brazil and the US, at a competitive price with normal marine fuels.
The article explains how burning ethanol will lower the fuel emissions factor to more than four times lower than VLSFO. For a company interested in lowering its carbon emissions profile now, this is a big boost.
Such a firm is Vale, the international mining company, which supplies iron ore to China from Brazil and elsewhere. Brazil produces ethanol in large quantities, since it’s banking on ethanol for emissions reduction in autos.
Ethanol is certified for the EU Emissions Trading System, but not under FuelEU. That’s a hurdle that needs to be overcome in the near future. But much shipping that can use ethanol does not touch European ports, and so can avoid carbon charges and regulation while still reducing carbon pollution.
The latest Maersk vessel to feature a WinGD methanol-fuelled X-DF-M engine is the 9,000 TEU Tema Maersk. Its sister ship Tangier Maersk is pictured here.
India is instituting major improvements in their ports and maritime system. This is crucial, since India is rapidly becoming an important technology and manufacturing center for the world.
Drewry recently put on a webinar about India’s plans.
India is taking steps to improve shipbuilding. The figure below shows regions affected.
India is also driving to increase India-flagged ships, and control more ships to carry their production goods. They want to increase the capacity of trade from India, as well as trade to India.
One aspect is improving waterways, including inland waterways. The figure below shows their goals for 2047.
Funding is important. India does not want to make the mistake many countries have made, seeking external capital, for instance from China. That would not be geopolitically smart, since it creates a dependency on a large foreign state and gives that state some control. But India now is generating excess capital looking for investments, because of the fast development in the country. India can do a lot of it themselves, even including private Indian financing. So India is creating financial incentives.
It’s a demanding agenda.
Drewry claims that India should focus on an ecosystem approach rather than individual projects.
With geopolitics favoring India right now as a manufacturing destination, the projects should all work together to create the overall maritime service system the nation needs.
I was unaware of this shift in US policy from reading general media accounts of what’s going on. Gwanhoo Lee identifies clearly the effect on firms playing in the AI marketplace.
As new and better models become available, both China and the US are now going to screen them for national security impact and decide whether to allow sales. The US can no longer claim to be different through allowing competition to determine the best available product.
It’s not surprising as we drift toward a totalitarian government here in the US. First, the national government has taken ownership stakes in high-tech companies such as Intel. Now the government is exercising control over what can be sold in the AI marketplace, so the consumer, particularly the international consumer, no longer determines what’s best through their money choice. It’s national socialism.
Furthermore, the way is now opened for AI decisions by the government to be bought. Back the government position and policies, or you can’t sell your product. If money changes hands to lubricate the decisions, say by support of a White House remodeling or a reflecting Pool redo, we’ve become a third-world country, no different from Angola or Mozambique. (These countries might argue with my characterization, and I agree, it’s egregious of me to make examples of them– but there are lots of examples around the world now.)
While the US leaders can talk the talk, they can’t walk it any more.
The situation is more complicated with AI than with earlier technologies such as relational databases or ERP or TMS/WMS. In those cases, once you purchased, you relied on the vendor to supply maintenance and support. They did it more or less well, and engendered many howls of fury about its quality.
AI is a bit different, because of the learning or training component. An AI product becomes more valuable over time because it trains on a larger and larger set of inputs. The software may improve somewhat, with better algorithms, but also the training set becomes larger, so more refined conclusions can be drawn. You now have two motivations for making a new purchase, or upgrading your subscription.
For users of AI technology purchased from the behemoths, it’s time to focus on exactly what job you want done, and whether some technology will accomplish it. Chasing the latest new version may not serve your specific goals. Your experts need to be able to tell you why results, financial or business, will be measurably better with a new model. Mostly this has nothing to do with the perceived security risks to the US tech environment. but corporate execs can control it much more closely than by following the AI news.
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