Michael Barnard
2 min readApr 4, 2024

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I suspect this will fall on deaf ears given the tone of your comment, but I'll respond nonetheless.

Bulk shipping is going to diminish radically, actually. 40% of bulks are coal, oil and gas. That's almost entirely going away in a world where climate change is taken seriously. A further 15% is raw iron ore, usually steaming to the same ports as a bunch of the coal. The economics of higher shipping costs and the ability to make new steel with renewably powered electrolysis or hydrogen processes means a lot more of that will be manufactured closer to the mines.

Container shipping tonnage will increase, but not nearly as much as bulks diminish.

You're correct that batteries won't cut it for crossing oceans by plane or ship, although a 2022 study found that even with the higher costs of batteries then, maritime cargo journeys of up to 2,500 km were economically feasible. The price of batteries is going down.

That's where biofuels come in. Some will be from oil heavy crops like canola, others will be from oil heavy waste streams like pork lard and cooking oils and others will come from biomass to ethanol to jet or diesel streams.

We already manufacture 100 million tons of biofuels, 70 million of which is diesel. That's currently wasted on ground transportation. As all ground transportation, most within continent aviation, all inland shipping and most short sea shipping electrifies, the biofuels will be available for long haul shipping and aviation.

My projection has 70 million tons of maritime diesel and 110 million tons of Jet A required in 2100, 180 million tons in total. That's only 80 million tons more than today.

Projections of shipping and aviation growth from those industries are based on linear projections of data from 1980 to 2019, an exceptional high growth period which included the transformation of China into the world's industrial powerhouse. That period of double digit growth for China is at an end — not a doom and gloom for China assertion, just a transition into a growth phase that the west envies — and the other developing economies don't have the conditions for double digit growth that China did.

Take all projections of fuel demand from organizations like IATA and the IMO with a very big grain of salt. The industries require significant growth to be attractive to investors, but the fundamentals don't support their projections.

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Michael Barnard
Michael Barnard

Written by Michael Barnard

Climate futurist and advisor. Founder TFIE. Advisor FLIMAX. Podcast Redefining Energy - Tech.

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