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The first all-electric tugboat in the US is about to launch (www.canarymedia.com)

submitted 7 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/technology@slrpnk.net

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[–] comradechestnut@slrpnk.net -3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] comradechestnut@slrpnk.net 1 points 7 months ago

Yes but producing things locally improves resilience and allows for decentralization. Large container shipping is a feature of free market capitalism and highly centralized industries. In a decentralized economy there wouldn't be anywhere near as much demand for container shipping.

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