The climate fixture Is our twice-A-a-month guide To the most important solutions for climate change around the world. Do you have comments about what we should cover? E -mail us on Climateforward@nytimes.com.
At a time when President Trump’s tariff policy led to parts of the global trading system having stopped, the shipping industry has been a less listed campaign to reduce its CO2 emissions.
Last month, countries reached a draft agreement under the international maritime organization, an agency of the United Nations, for which ships would be needed to lower their emissions or pay a fee. When Somini Sengupta reportedIt is “a remarkable, although modest” movement that comes down to a load on the CO2 emissions of industry.
And a large number of companies – from biofuel producers to companies that make sailing to better use ocean winds – take steps to revise an industry responsible for around 3 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions.
“The industry is in the abyss of real progress,” said Ingrid Irigoyen, president and chief executive of the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance, a group of companies, many of which are confronted with shipping to the shipping industry.
Located in Le Havre, France, Transoceanic Wind Transport or Towt, builds large sailing boats to transport freight. The ships of the company, which are more than 260 feet and accommodate 830 Standard North -American pallets, transport goods such as wine, champagne and jam, often for companies that want to promote their CO2 footprint. This year, Towt also started to wear passengers on traveling over the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 90 percent of Towt route from France to the United States is navigated with wind energy. The company currently has two ships in operation and has ordered six to deliver in the coming years. Trips from France to New York usually take about two weeks.
“It’s just the beginning,” said Guillaume Le Grand, Chief Executive Officer of the company.
Trump’s rates
But the Towt company has not been immune to the impact of the rates of the Trump administration. Earlier this year, while Le Grand spoke with a winemaker in the Burgundian region in France about the use of Towt to send his wine over the Atlantic Ocean, the news about Trump’s rates dived on the winemaker’s phone.
“It was just that kind of shock moment,” said Le Grand. That winemaker was not the only company that was hit by the rates, said Le Grand. As a result, the company tries to seduce American customers By offering 30 percent discounts.
About two -thirds of the company of his company came from sending goods from France to the United States, but that figure has fallen to less than half, said Le Grand. He also shifts the focus from the company to destinations outside the United States and opening routes to Central America and possibly Cuba.
Towt is one of a growing number of companies try to use wind energy to send a load more durable. Econowind, based in the Netherlands sucking wings That trek in the wind to push ships forward. In 2023, Cargill, the agricultural giant, along with a few other companies, Wind Winds used, a kind of sail used to use the wind and to have ships used to use less fuel.
Irigoyen, however, warns that it is difficult for cargo ships to rely great on wind energy, given the unpredictability.
Maritime’s future
The third ship of Towt is expected to be ready for delivery in 2026, according to Le Grand, and the company is planning for its fleet to the Top 500 by 2040.
With regard to industry in general, the design -maritime organizational agreement could be officially assumed in October if countries approve them. Irigoyen warned that there are still excellent questions with the agreement and said that some of the regulations will be difficult to implement.
Then there is the issue of politics. The United States did not participate in the negotiations on the agreement, and some American companies are still trying to stagger their efforts to fight climate change, Irigoyen said.
Yet she thinks that the efforts of the industry will continue to exist than the current political environment. “Politics comes and go,” said Irigoyen.
Electric vehicles
A decade-long search for a battery that can end the gasoline era
In a suburb of Boston, Siyu Huang, the Chief Executive of Faculty Energy, and her husband, Alex Yu, worked on a new type of electric vehicle battery – a “fixed state” battery – that could turn the car upside down in a few years, as a discouraging number of technical challenges.
For Huang and her company, their battery Has the potential to change the way consumers think of electric vehiclesGive the United States and Europe a lead over China and help save the planet.
Factorial is one of the dozens of companies trying to find out batteries that can charge faster, go further and make electric cars cheaper and more convenient than petrol vehicles. Transport is the largest source of humans made by humans, and electric vehicles can be a powerful weapon against climate change and urban air pollution. – Jack Ewing
Retention
Weed Manager of the Year: The search of one man to save the Sonoran desert
When Don Pike takes his daily walk, he switches his brown walking shoes, grabs his walking stick and bucket and goes outside. Ten feet later, he carefully slides past the barbed wire and enters the Tonto National Forest. Unlike other parts of the Tonto, where the soil between the native plants and trees is covered with dry grasses, the earth is pale, crispy and bare, as it is intended.
That’s because Pike weed has drawn.
He started hunting the thick grasses, which were introduced in the area almost 15 years ago. Since then he estimates that he and his team of volunteers have erased 550 of the approximately 14,000 hectares that they supervise. In 2024, that delivered him the title of Arizona’s weed manager of the year.
Work of volunteers such as Pike has always been an important supplement for managing federal countries, according to government employees who say that their programs have been under -financed for years. But because the Trump government and the so-called Ministry of Government started efficiency with mass dismissals from federal employees, volunteers have become more vital than ever. – Austyn Gaffney
- Advertisement -
