The Shipping Industry Gets Serious About Emissions

The climatic solution It is ours twice-AA-months guide To the most important solutions to climate change worldwide. Do you have comments on what we should cover? Send us an email to Climateforward@nytimes.com.

At a time when President Trump’s tariff policies have caused parts of the global commercial system to stop, the shipping industry has been in a less noticeable campaign to reduce its carbon emissions.

Last month, countries reached a draft agreement under the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations Agency, which would require the ships to reduce their emissions or pay a rate. As Somini Senguta reported, it is “a notable and modest thought movement” that is equivalent to an industry carbon emissions tax.

And a large number of companies, from biofuel producers to companies that make candles to better take advantage of oceanic winds, are bar steps to review an industry that is approximately 3 percent of the world’s greenhouse gase emissions.

“The industry is in the precipice of some real progress,” said Ingrid Irigoyen, president and executive director of the Alliance of Maritime Buyers of Zero Issuance, a group of colleagues, many of whom depend on the shipment, who are working to decarbonize the shipping industry.

Based in Le Havre, France, Transoceanic Wind Transport, or Towt, is building large sailboats to transport load. The company’s ships, which have more than 260 feet long and can accommodate 830 standard American palettes, transport products such as wine, champagne and jam, often for colleagues who wish to promote their carbon footprint. This year, Towt also begged transporting passengers on trips through the Atlantic Ocean.

More than 90 percent of Towt’s route from France to the United States navigate using wind energy. Currently, the company has two ships in operation, and has ordered that six more will be delivered in the next two years. The trips from France to New York usually take about two weeks.

“It’s just the beginning,” said Guillaume Le Grand, executive director of the company.

Trump rates

But Towt’s business has not been immune to the impact of Trump administration tariffs. Earlier this year, when Grand was talking to a winemaker in the Burgundy region of France about the use of Towt to send his wine through the Atlantic, Trump’s news appeared on the winemaker’s phone.

“It was just that kind of shock,” Le Grand said. That winemaker was the only business affected by tariffs, said Le Grand. As a result, the company is trying to attract American customers offering discounts of 30 percent.

Approximately two thirds of his company’s business used to come from the sending of products from France to the United States, but that figure has fallen to less than half, said Le Grand. The company’s approach is also changing to destinations outside the United States and opening routes to Central America and possible Cuba.

Towt is among a growing number of companies trying to use wind energy to send more sustainable load. Based in the Netherlands, Econowind makes suction wings that pull wind to help boost ships forward. In 2023, Cargill, the agricultural giant, along with a couple of other companies, winds deployed, a type of candle used to take advantage of the wind and allow ships to use less fuel.

Irigoyen, however, warns that it is difficult for cargo ships to depend largely on wind energy, given its unpredictability.

Maritime’s future

Towt’s third ship is expected to be ready for delivery in 2026, according to Le Grand, and the company plans that its fleet is Top 500 by 2040.

As for the industry in general, the Maritime Organization Agreement project could adopt official in October if countries approve it. Irigoyen warned that they are still pending questions with the agreement, and said that some of the regulations will be difficult to implement.

So it is the question of politics. The United States did not participate in negotiations on the agreement, and some US companies are still trying to maintain their efforts to combat climate change in silence, Irigoyen said.

Even so, she believes that industry efforts will last beyond the current political environment. “Politics goes and goes,” Irigoyen said.

Electric vehicles

A search for a decade battery that can finish the era of gasoline

In a suburb of Boston, Siyu Huang, the executive director of Factorial Energy, and her husband, Alex Yu, have been working on a new type of electric vehicle battery, a “solid state” battery, which could turn the automotive industry in a few years, if a discouraging number of technical challenges can be overcome.

For Huang and his company, its battery has the potential to change the way consumers think about electric vehicles, give the United States and Europe an advantage over China and help save the planet.

Factorial is one of the boxes of companies that try to invent batteries that can be loaded faster, party and make electric cars cheaper and more convenient than gasoline vehicles. Transport is the largest source of man -made by man, and electric vehicles could be a powerful weapon against climate change and urban air pollution. – Jack Ewing

Read more.

Conservation

Weed Manager of the Year: The search for a man to save the Sonora desert

When Don Pike gives his daily walk, hey ties his brown mountain boots, grabs his cane and his cube hat and goes outside. Feet later, the slippery carefully fit the spike wire and enter the national fool forest. Unlike other parts of the fool, where the ground between plants and native trees is covered with dry pastures, the earth is pale, crunchy and bars, as they are meean.

That is because Pike has weeds.

Heer hunting the thick pastures, who were introduced in the area by landscapes, almost 15 years ago. Since then, he estimates that he and his volunteer team have eliminated 550 of the approximately 14,000 acres they supervise. In 2024, that earned him the title of the weed manager of the Year of Arizona.

The work of volunteers such as Pike has always carried an important supplement for federal land management, according to government workers who say their programs have a leg without financing for years. But since the Trump administration and the so -called Government’s efficiency department beg massive fierce dismissals, volunteers like Pike have Beckome more vital than ever. – Austyn Gaffney

Read more.