[Scott] Next on "Energy Switch."

The industry we all rely on and almost never think about.

Most of us think we understand the size of an, you know, an aircraft carrier.

What would it be size-wise compared to?

- Oh, the real big ones?

- Yeah.

- Be about two-thirds.

- It would be two-thirds of that?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- If you stood up a big ship on its stern?

[Scott] Yeah.

- It's taller than the Eiffel Tower.

- What does it cost?

I mean, is this expensive form of transportation?

You gotta move it across the whole ocean.

- No.

Shipping works on economies of scale.

Say you have a container full of textiles from Pakistan to Miami.

On a ship, it will take 45 days and it will cost $4,200.

You can do it via air, but it will cost $34,000, six to nine times that.

[Scott] Coming up, we set sail for a fascinating, entertaining discussion on shipping.

[Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by Arizona State University.

Shaping global leaders, driving innovation, and transforming the future.

Arizona State, The New American University.

[upbeat music] - I'm Scott Tinker, and I'm an energy scientist.

I work in the field, lead research, speak around the world, write articles, and make films about energy.

This show brings together leading experts on vital topics in energy and climate.

They may have different perspectives, but my goal is to learn, and illuminate, and bring diverging views together towards solutions.

Welcome to the "Energy Switch."

Shipping is an essential, yet for most of us, invisible industry.

No matter where you are right now, almost everything around you came on a ship.

Partly because it's the lowest price of any transport.

This makes it extremely important globally.

Yet it faces many challenges, especially in the U.S.

where the shipbuilding industry has nearly stagnated.

In part one of this discussion, we discover shipping with insider perspectives from my expert guests.

Margaret Doyle is a director of Transparency Fuels, a marine fuels brokerage with more than 30 years experience in the industry, from shipping and consulting, to policy.

Anna Silva is the manager of Cruise Ops at the Port Everglades terminal in Florida.

Also with decades of experience.

Aboard ships as an instructor, in bulk cargo, and cruise ships.

On this episode of "Energy Switch," the wide world of shipping, part one.

Let's just list things that come to us on ships.

- Bananas.

- Iron ore.

- Mattresses.

- Car parts.

- Refrigerators.

- Actual cars.

- Okay.

- Boats and yachts.

- Boats on boats?

- Boats on boats, yes.

- Olive oil.

- Oh.

- Ooh.

Watermelon.

- Bad wine.

[all laughing] - Good wine.

- In tanks.

Mm-hmm.

- Yeah, orange juice concentrate also comes in tanks.

- Bad wine, like in tank tanks?

- Yep.

- And then they bottle later?

- Yeah.

- Ah good.

Yum.

- Sneakers.

Yeah.

- Any textile.

- Yeah and- - Crocs?

Oh wait, I shouldn't show this.

- Yes, yeah.

[all laughing] Basically anything you're wearing.

- Yeah.

- Comes on a ship.

- Pretty much.

- The furniture and appliances in your home.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Come via ship.

- Sure, sure.

- Majority of your electronics.

- The things that make your home, the tile for the roof.

The marble for your counters.

That comes in on container ships.

- A lot of the feeder chemicals that we use in our industry, but are not made here.

- Okay, so like container ships, we've been talking a lot about, but fuels.

- Yeah, chemical tankers.

- Gotcha.

- Crude oil and then-- - Yeah.

- Refined product as well.

You ship that around.

- It sounds kinda like everything.

- Pretty much 90% of everything travels via ship or vessel, yes.

- I agree.

- Okay.

- 90%.

[laughs] - What does it cost?

I mean, is this expensive form of transportation?

You gotta move it across the whole ocean.

- No.

Shipping works on economies of scale.

So, it is the lowest cost.

So, say, you have a container full of textiles from the Pakistan to Miami, just as an example.

[Scott] Yeah.

- On a ship, it will take 45 days and it will cost $4,200 to transport.

You can do it via air, but it will cost $34,000.

It'll get there in six days, but it is gonna cost almost six to nine times that.

[Scott] Okay.

- The way the maritime industry works for container ships is TEUs.

It's 20-foot equivalent units.

So, a price for a 20-foot TEU from Shanghai to LA Long Beach, it's about between $1,500 and $2,200.

That's incredibly cheap.

- Are those 20 feet?

- Yeah, there's 20s and 40s on there.

- So, those are the containers?

- Yep.

Yeah, yeah.

- Right.

- A TEU?

Haven't heard them.

- Yep, 20 foot equivalent unit.

- I'm sure the first acronym we're gonna hear all day.

- Oh, no.

Plenty.

- Not the last.

[laughs] - And the other thing to realize is that for the bulk commodities, the ore and the, there's so much more that goes into pricing where it's the supply of ships that are out there, the demand, the routes they're on.

So, containers are a little bit different, but they are affected by fuel price, recession, global uncertainties.

So- - Okay.

- The price of everything fluctuates much more in the containerized business, but it is, it's still the cheapest way to go.

- Yeah.

So I'm hearing essentially everything that isn't made-- - Pretty much, yeah.

- Comes on a ship.

- Yeah.

- It comes here cheaper than certainly flying.

How about rail?

- Yeah, you have land and sea.

And then 16 times more than that is air.

And then, somewhere in between sits rail and then land.

- Right.

- Okay.

So, relatively we're, shipping's the cheapest.

- Correct.

- Right.

- And-- - Because of scale.

- Because of the economies of scale.

Yeah.

- Okay.

This is great stuff.

One word, if you can.

What are some challenges of all this?

- Infrastructure.

- Workforce.

- Prices.

- Environmental regulations.

- The structure of the U.S.

unions are, can create barriers.

- Yeah.

Sure.

- Good or bad?

- Yeah.

- Poor congestion is another one.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- So just that whole?

- Yeah.

I mean-- - Supply chain challenge.

- Yeah.

The container has to get dropped off.

But there's only a finite number of containers.

That container has to find its way someplace else.

And if you don't have the truck to take it back, that's an issue.

- Are politics an issue some time?

- Yes.

[laughs] - Yes.

- Yes.

- Unanimous agreement?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Geopolitical instability.

- Yeah.

- The Suez Canal is suffering a decrease in transit because of the wars and piracy.

- Okay.

- So, each ship that chooses not to use the Suez Canal has to go around the bottom of Africa.

And that is adding 4,000 miles to the trip.

- Fuel is the number one expense for a ship.

- Okay.

- And every noon, the ship actually sends back a report and it says how much fuel you consumed.

And that is the one of the big drivers.

- Sure.

- For the people operating the ship.

- Yeah.

Massive.

Let's dive into some details.

Okay.

- Okay.

Sure.

- I don't wanna call this the invisible industry, but I don't think it's well known to the public.

- It is a best kept secret.

I hate that phrase, but it is a best kept secret.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- So, I just wanna start with a question I've always wanted to ask experts.

[Anna] Go ahead.

- What's the biggest ship on the planet today?

- Probably the 22,000 TEU container ships.

- They are?

- Yeah.

And they run about $270 million to build.

Which is nothing when you come to the, and I defer to Anna.

The, far as expense?

I would say cruise ships are up there too.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Give me a feel for, 'cause most of us think we understand the size of an aircraft carrier, a military vessel.

That's a big ship they launch.

What would it be size-wise compared to?

- Oh, the real big ones?

- Yeah.

- Be about two-thirds.

- The aircraft carrier?

- One of the bigger carriers.

Yeah.

- Would be two thirds of that?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- If you stood up a big ship on its stern?

- Yeah?

- It's taller than the Eiffel Tower.

- Okay.

- Like, it's several football fields long.

It's a couple wide.

- How many are there?

How many ships are there?

On our little planet.

- 50,000.

- That's correct.

- 50,000?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- If you go with, there's two ways to look at it.

- Yeah.

There's-- - There's 100 gross tons where you cut off.

You say, "Okay, I'm only cutting off at 100 gross tons."

So, that includes yachts, fishing vessels, ferries, harbor craft.

So, your number shoots up to 109,000.

[Scott] Yeah.

- But then when you go to, which is really the cutoff that everyone uses for regulatory, for safety is 500 gross tons.

- Okay.

- That's, gross tons is the whole ship, the cargo, everything.

And once you pop up to 500 gross tons, worldwide it's about 70,000.

So, the number goes down a lot.

- Seventy thousand to, depending on how you count them, 110 or 20 or 30,000 ships.

What are their main routes?

- That also depends on commodity.

[Margaret] Yeah.

[Scott] Okay.

- So, coal runs from the North America to Europe.

- It runs from Russia to Europe.

It runs from Australia to China, Japan, and India.

- Yeah.

- And then, there's a little bit of South America that goes over to the Japan, but that's just coal and iron ore.

Then there's container cargo.

Transpacific is huge.

- Yeah.

- It's Shanghai, Hong Kong.

That whole Pacific Rim over to LA Long Beach and Seattle, Pacific Northwest.

- Okay.

Okay.

- There's Asia through the Panama Canal to our East Coast that isn't getting railed across.

- Okay.

- There is Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal.

- Okay.

- Or as we mentioned before, when the Suez can't be used for instability or risk.

- Right.

- They go down around Africa and up.

- Okay.

- And then, there's a petroleum which all comes outta the Persian Gulf.

It goes into the Med via the Suez.

It comes to the United States in the Gulf to be refined.

Mostly along the Texas coast.

- Right.

- And then it can also go to, between Mexico and Japan.

- It sounds like everything is leaving the emerging and developing world and coming to the developed world.

- Correct.

- Not much going the other way?

Do we ship back?

Empty containers?

- It was like, we returned empties.

- Well, we uh- - And refined product.

- Yeah.

Refined products.

- Okay.

[Anna] So, refined petroleum products.

- And since the evolution of fracking.

We are basically an exporter of liquefied natural gas.

- Right.

- And certain petroleum products as well.

- Okay.

- But no, it's true.

There's, we are an importer above all.

- Okay.

If I were to see a map of this, it must look really cool.

- It is.

- It is.

Yes.

- Yeah.

I looked at it the other night, yeah.

- If you look at the map, at the different trade lanes and then put them all on one on top of the other?

- Yeah.

- It's quite stunning.

- And that's how some of the rates for some of the other, more of the bulk commodities there actually looked at the, the rates are looked out via the route, the size of the ship, the demand, and the routes they travel.

Yeah.

The routes are key to a lot of it.

- Let's get to cost.

Margaret, you've mentioned a little bit, but let's just-- - Okay.

- Get to it.

- What does a ship, what's a ship cost?

And then give me that also with useful life service of a ship.

- And the life of a ship depends on so many things.

It depends on the route, where it was built.

- The maintenance.

- The maintenance of whether you, I mean, I say between 20 and 40.

I know that seems like a weird range.

But again, if you have it going to a lot of different ports with heavy weather, it may not last as long.

And your maintenance program is so important.

- Twenty to 40 years.

- Yeah.

Correct.

- Twenty to 40 years.

- Okay.

- And the salt water is very corrosive.

- Yeah.

- In the Great Lakes, you can have a ship last 90 years.

Because it's on fresh water.

So, it's the salt water itself that-- - Yeah.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Plays a hand in tearing things apart.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Now, that's for your TEU ships.

I'm feeling like quite an expert on container ships.

- Yeah.

Container ships.

- Human ships are pretty damn big too.

- Cruise ships.

- Cruise ships.

- Yes.

- How?

Are they similarly priced or?

- They can run up to a billion dollars.

But it's not a barebone ship for people to work on and just work.

No, you're entertaining these people.

They want water slides and surfing and giant theaters and a central park in the middle of it.

And you, it needs to be a 6,000 room hotel.

So, the price-- - Restaurants?

- The price quickly escalates.

So, yeah, you're looking up.

The latest one maxed out at $1.2 billion.

It starts to run up the checkbook.

- And the actual crew itself that run the ships probably around 30, 40 people.

And that's high.

The hotel crew, about 1,500, right?

- For a big cruise ship, which would be like 6,000 passengers.

- Yeah.

- There's probably 1,000 to 1,500-- - Yeah.

- Crew members on board.

And that's engine room, deck department, and guest services, hotel services, yes.

On a regular ship like this?

25.

- Yeah.

Okay.

So, 25 to 40 people to?

- To a thousand plus.

- Run the boat?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- And everybody else is for us?

- Hotels.

- Correct.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- They are floating cities.

[Anna] Yes.

- And then, how about some of the big liquid or, you know, copper ore, ships like that?

An LNG tanker.

- Yeah.

- You gotta keep that really cold.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

That's whole thing.

Yeah.

That's cryogenic.

So, cryogenics is very expensive.

So a brand new, one of the bigger LNG carriers?

That's about $200 million.

LNG has been going since the early '50s.

- Okay.

- The technology is very sound.

But you know, you do have to keep that gas cool until you actually?

And the whole idea of LNG started with bringing energy to places that were energy deserts.

- Sure.

- Japan is one example.

- And oil tankers do the same thing.

- They're just, they're not, some of them are, they're either heated cargoes or cooled cargoes-- - But not-- - But they're not to the extent for LNG, yeah.

And their safety record is very good.

I mean, '89 was the Valdez, which created the Oil Pollution Act in 1990.

And the records, it reflects very, very well.

Yes.

- Yeah.

Speaking of safety.

Give us a feel for, in terms of like, the number of ships that are out there and the number of accidents.

And has that improved through time even?

- I would say the number of accidents has improved.

- Okay.

- We are hearing about them more just because we're hearing about everything more.

There's more news out there, there's more space to fill.

I would say overall for safety, the numbers have come down because of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, OPA 90.

We require double hull tankers now.

So, if the outside shell is breached, the inside shell is not.

So, all the oil stays on board where it's supposed to be.

There's better tracking of ships.

So, the ship is on autopilot, if you will.

So, it'll know when it's going off course and adjust, so it's not running into shallow ground.

Also with autopilot and radar, and all the advances in that.

Collisions?

- Yeah.

- Will happen less.

They're still happening.

But they're happening less because now the ship is alerting everyone on the bridge.

So, there's a lot more layers of safety.

- Yes.

- In anti-collision and groundings than there were previously.

- So, is it fair to say that, I mean, we track weather so well now, but would that be one of the leading causes of an issue is a storm that gets outta control or waves?

What causes shipwrecks?

I mean, what literally causes ships to?

- Either a catastrophic engine failure.

Which then just makes it- - Like, explodes kinda thing?

- It explodes or just shuts down, and then you can't do anything.

Like you are- - It's bobbing around.

- Yes.

- Very adrift.

- Like, you've got motion.

You don't just stop on a dime out there.

- Right.

- You're moving.

And if you've got no way to control that because your engines have stopped working, then you have a key bridge incident.

I see.

- I mean, these vessels are built to sub-stand almost everything.

- Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

We used to build ships in the U.S.

- We did.

- Yes, we did.

Yeah, I think in World War II, we cranked one out every 42 days.

- Do we build many ships anymore?

Or where are they built in the world?

- There's four top shipyards.

California, Louisiana, Alabama.

And now, there's one in Wisconsin.

But nothing to the size.

Because they're built to support the Jones Act, which is also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920.

And that says, if you're gonna have a U.S.

flagship, it has to be built in the U.S.

yard, crewed by U.S.

and under U.S.

flag.

Basically like the DMV has to be the United States.

The skills are gone since.

- DMV?

- Oh, Department of Motor Vehicle.

- Motor Vehicle.

- Oh, that's what I was thinking.

- Sorry, we switched over to cars.

- I was thinking, but I thought maybe it's-- - Another acronym.

- That's the analogy I like to use when I try to explain how flag state works.

- Makes perfect sense.

Yes.

- It's basically the-- - That is the last one.

- Your license plate is the flag on the back of your-- - Gotcha.

- Say, you know, Monrovia or you know, Panama.

- Okay.

- Liberia.

- Yeah, so it's so Jones Act centric that they have really, and the technology's gone, you know?

The dad who was the welder 30 years ago, he no longer works for that shipyard.

- Interesting.

- So, the big player is the U.S.

military.

- Yeah.

- You know, your Bath Iron Works.

So, a lot of these companies, yeah, they can say they do commercial.

But they, a lot of their revenue comes from military and government-- - 'Cause we're still building our own military vessels.

- We are.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Is this a wise thing?

Are we?

I mean, it seems like something we wanna have some-- - Correct.

- Expertise in.

Again, to me but- - Because the, we're in the-- - Given all that we depend on, 90%.

- In the world where the ships are built.

China, South Korea and Japan.

That's where cargo ships come from.

Cruise ships come from Europe.

But yes, our lack of shipbuilding ability?

- Yeah.

- Is a negative for the United States.

It's a negative in national defense.

It's a negative in resiliency.

And we are dependent upon other countries to produce ships for us to use.

- Right.

- So, if something happened and hope it never does.

But they say, "Well, we're not gonna build your ships anymore."

- Then the united States is in trouble, yes.

- And there was something introduced called the SHIPS Act.

- The SHIPS Act.

- By Senator Mark Kelly.

- Okay.

- It's a bipartisan bill that's trying to rejuvenate the U.S.

Merchant Marine and the U.S.

shipbuilding.

It just, and CMAC GM is one of the first, they have been able to re-flag one of their big ships.

- Right.

- It's built in Korea.

- But-- - But they, it's re-flagged to the U.S.

- Re-flagged.

Okay.

- And U.S.

crew.

- Interesting.

- A lot of people think that's the only way you're gonna get there.

- Oh, by transitioning like that?

- It's trans and-- - But those hurdles to transition- - Are a lot.

- Are monumental.

- Yeah.

- What would it take?

Let's say we wanted to build, I'll pick a number.

- Okay.

- Swag it, you know?

A third of our own ships.

- Okay, well, it takes, currently it takes the United States about 12 to 18 months to push a ship off the yard.

Right now these are very much kind of one of a kind.

- I see.

- Yeah.

- We would need to go back to where we were in World War II where we were prefabbing and we were making the same ship over and over and over again.

- And that's a great idea.

- Yeah.

- But it's just not viable because the majority of the steel we import.

- Correct.

- It has to be made with U.S.

steel.

- You don't have the technology.

The technology in these Korean and Chinese yards.

[Scott] Yeah.

- And the other thing that no one talks about is the power requirements.

We don't have that.

- Right.

- Everything is about energy requirements.

[Scott] Yeah, sure.

- And what to do to actually recreate what happens in the Chinese or South Korean yard, is so hard to do.

- Do you have a feel for the energy needed for a big yard?

- I do not, but I know China has basically, they have, their grid needs are specific.

We haven't even thought that far.

- Okay.

- We're like, "Oh, we're gonna get the yards up and running.

We're gonna get the people."

The people- - We don't have the people.

- The people aren't here.

- The skills.

- The welders aren't here, you know?

- So, we're looking at a decade or two.

- We're looking at-- - Oh, a decade easily.

- And we also need the physical space to have the yards.

[Margaret] Yeah.

We don't have that.

- Like, where shipyards used to be have been folded and now they're condos and buildings.

So- - Luxury condos.

- The physical space.

- Yeah.

- Yes, the physical space-- - Yeah.

- To have a shipyard is something we also need.

- Yeah.

- That's fascinating.

What fuels historically have been used to power ships?

- Okay, well we can start with wind and rowing.

- Okay.

- But then we moved to-- - Well, that's not trivial though.

That was like-- - That's not trivial.

No, that was- - For centuries.

- For many years.

- Yeah.

- Then we went to sail.

Then we went to coal and steam.

So, like, think the Titanic with those guys shoveling coal into the boiler.

- Burn coal, boil water, make steam.

Turn a turbine.

- Make steam.

- Yeah.

- Correct.

[Scott] Run a propeller.

- We had a very short window of nuclear.

- Okay.

- And then we went to diesel.

- Oh, back to diesel?

And now we're sitting in diesel world.

- Yeah, diesel was, like, the early 20th century.

It's been around a long time.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

We had a short window of nuclear on non-military.

- There is, there are a few.

Yes.

The Savannah commercial ships that had nuclear power.

- It's now a museum.

- It is now a museum all tied up.

- Interesting.

So we're on diesel.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And for all, for cruise ships?

For- - Everybody.

- Yeah.

- For cargo ships.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- For- - For tugboats, for ferries.

- There's three fuels after January 1st, 2020.

[Scott] Okay.

- There's high sulfur fuel where you put what you call a scrubber on a ship.

It's an exhaust, a gas cleaning system.

- Right.

- They're very big.

They take up a lot of room, but they don't solve any of your other problems.

- Okay.

- But typical, the maritime industry, it was the best, the cheapest route if you wanted to stay with the high sulfur fuel.

- Okay.

- And then, your other options are what they call a distillate, which is a marine gas oil or a low sulfur fuel.

- Okay.

- And that's like, if you're gonna go when you, you say, "Oh gimme, I don't want the 87, I wanna go higher."

- Yeah.

Regular, plus or premium when you're filling your car up.

- That's what you're, and then you don't use a scrubber.

And that helps you meet your sulfur cap from 2020.

- But I do have to pour DEF, diesel emissions fuel into my diesel- - You do?

- Ford Pick-up.

- Oh yeah.

- To help with the emissions from that still.

- Right.

Yeah.

And it's, that's the whole thing is that-- - Basically it's like a urea.

- It is.

That, yeah-- - It is urea.

- Oh yeah.

- Very good.

- Yeah.

- That's impressive.

- I've loaded urea on ships.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- So, they can do that.

Yes.

- Yes.

[laughs] - But yeah.

So and then the other option for that was LNG.

- LNG, liquified natural gas.

- Yes.

- Right.

That was the next- - Big thing.

- Answer.

- That was an and- - But as Margaret said.

- Now, that has to be really cold.

- Yeah.

- Cryogenic.

- That's not a problem.

Liquefaction isn't, no offense, not rocket science.

- But on the ship?

- Yeah.

Well, it's easy.

- So are they, but it's an energy penalty.

They have to keep it really cold.

- They do.

- That takes energy.

- Yeah, but there's no sulfur dioxide emitted with energy.

- Right, right.

- You have natural gases- - You check that box.

- Yeah, SOx, NOx, mercury, none of that with gas which is kinda nice.

- But there is the issue of methane leak.

- Right.

- Because basically you're taking methane and and making it very cold.

- Right.

- The carbon footprint is still there.

And that's the issue with the methanol that people are touting right now and liquified natural gas.

- Okay.

- Because the availability of the amount that you're needed for the, what they call the order book, the ships that are coming out that are LNG and methanol?

Those fuels right now are fossil based.

They are not gonna solve the problem for reducing the carbon foot.

- But diesel won't solve it either.

- Diesel doesn't solve anything.

No.

You're just gonna pay a fine.

- Okay.

'Cause this says LNG Power.

- LNG.

Yeah, I guarantee, depends on where it's coming from?

It does not have LNG on there.

- If it's not running on, what is it running on?

Diesel?

- It's running on, probably on- - It's a dual fuel.

- Yes.

They can run it on both.

- Oh yeah.

There's no pure ones.

- How hard is that to switch?

- It's not, it's a, it's a-- yeah, a system.

But you can do it-- - You can do it.

- Easily back and forth.

- And when you-- - Interesting.

- When you buy that technology from say a Wartsilä, which is a big engine manufacturer.

- Yeah.

- Those chief, they're all trained on that.

But like, the Crowley ships that go from, Crowley's a big American operator that goes from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico.

They switch a little ways out just because of certain environmental restrictions.

They don't go, they don't leave the dock at LNG.

They'll switch to LNG when they're in open water.

- Interesting.

So, I would imagine some of that decision must be economics, right?

- Oh yes.

- Arbitrage between the price of gas and the price of diesel?

Somewhere where-- - As much or more than innovations.

- Somewhere between economics and whatever environmental regulation.

- Yeah.

- You're working underneath.

Whatever port you're in, what their restriction is, what that region's restrictions are, what that country's restrictions are.

- Okay.

- Like, there's all of those levels of regulation.

- Right.

- That you need to make sure.

- Right.

- Plus economics.

- This is really fascinating.

Let's take a little break.

And we'll come back.

- Okay.

- And dive kind of into the carbon emission side of the story.

And that'll bring us back into some other fun things.

- Sounds good.

Yeah.

- Fascinating stuff.

- It's been wonderful.

Really fun.

Thank you.

[Scott] In the U.S., 90% of everything comes to us on ships.

It's the lowest cost form of transport by weight or volume with a very favorable safety record.

Ships carry manufactured goods from Asia, food and ore from Latin America, oil from the Middle East, and LNG to export markets.

There are tens of thousands of container ships, boat cargo ships, tankers for liquids and chemicals and cruise ships.

The largest are bigger than aircraft carriers and cost hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

But we no longer make them here.

Cargo ships are mostly built in Asia.

Cruise ships in Europe.

To revive U.S.

shipbuilding would require workforce, shipyards, steel, even energy infrastructure that don't currently exist.

It would take decades if it's even possible.

All these ships run on diesel fuel, but are just beginning to transition to LNG and other options.

We'll talk about these and the challenges of potentially decarbonizing emissions in part two of shipping.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] Major funding provided by Arizona State University.

Home to the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, addressing critical challenges toward a future in which all living things thrive.

Arizona State, The New American University.