Breaking news from the international environment beat: China last month launched a new electric-powered cargo ship from the southern port city of Guangzhou, according to the international business publication Quartz.
The 2,200-ton ship, which measures 229 feet long and 45 feet wide, runs off more than 1,000 lithium batteries. It can travel 50 miles before needing to stop and recharge for two hours. (And you thought your Tesla had a stingy range.)
Quartz quoted a professor from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, who called the environmentally friendly ship a “breakthrough . . . in terms of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and pollution.” Most ships use, gasp, high-sulfur heavy fuel oil.
Sounds like the feel-good environmental story of the week, right? A bold stroke of green leadership from Red China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide? Well, not so fast.
It seems that the ship was designed with but one kind of cargo in mind: As it goes up and down China’s Pearl River, the zero-emissions ship, Quartz deadpans, “will transport coal to a local power plant.” And we’re talking about a lot more coal than the “16 Tons” Tennessee Ernie Ford sang about in the 1950s: The ship’s capacity is some 2,300 tons.
So there you have it. China, where environmentalism means using electricity to get coal to power plants to be burned to make electricity that can be used to get coal to power plants to be . . . well, you get the idea.
