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A comment on Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power. Parent comment

Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by hommelix on Thursday November 12, 2026 @05:55PM (#50475586)
> Methane works perfectly well for shipping. It's cheap, abundant, and we already have all the infrastructure for it. > > And to fully decarbonize it, we'll just shift to biogas or power-to-gas.

There is nowhere close to enough biogas for ocean going vessel. Methane has got into the focus due to methane slip. And fossil methane only allow a limited CO2 reduction vs Marine Diesel oil. It won't be enough to reach 2030 IMO target on CO2 reduction.

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Re:Electric Ship Batteries Promise Compact, Cooler Power by cyberax on Thursday November 12, 2026 @07:14PM (#50476373)
> There is nowhere close to enough biogas for ocean going vessel.

The total amount of biogas production is around 2.5 exajoules (2.5*10^18) per year. The amount of diesel used for intercontinental shipping is 213 million tons, or 10^19J (given the 45MJ/kg energy density).

So we need about 4x the current biogas production. That's entirely doable, especially with the power-to-gas transition.

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