[Un article de The Conversation écrit par Sylvain Roche – Docteur en sciences économiques, Ingénieur de recherche et enseignant associé, Sciences Po Bordeaux]
If it has persisted through water sports and pleasure navigation, sailing is reinventing itself today in the merchant transport sector to meet the triple issue of decarbonation, reindustrialisation and resilience.
Carried by emblematic figures of the sailing race, small innovative start-ups or even large multinationals, it appears as one of the most mature technological choices to project itself in an uncertain economic and geopolitical context. The wind is a green, abundant and free energy. By offering an alternative model, the sail inscribes maritime transport in another imagination, another modernity: that of sobriety.
However, the alternative she offers is not free from criticism. For its defenders, the main challenge is to demonstrate that it has its place in a decarbon future. In an article published in December 2024 in the journal Sustainable development and territoriesI analyze how the sector must offer new stories, adapted to an ecologically constrained world.
A sector dominated by the thermo-industrial imagination
Used from Antiquity, sailing experienced a growing decline from the end of the 19th centurye century in commercial transport, then a disappearance, in favor of the heat engine, more effective in the context of international trade and the colonial ambitions of the Western nations.
By continuing the imaginations of power and freedom, inheritances of successive industrial revolutions, the thermal, chemical and electric triptych, structured around fossil and fissiles, is always defined as the reference model, but now under an ecological prism.
Today, natural gas and electro-fuels are defended by their promoters as the most rational solutions to meet the objectives of transport of transport. The emblematic case is that of hydrogen, totem of green growth, surrounded by a magical imagination. Nuclear energy, and its “myth of a world freed from all natural constraints” (unlike renewable energies like wind), is also presented as a technical solution for maritime transport of goods.
The liquefied natural gas sector (LNG) experienced a boom of 33 % between 2023 and 2024, with now more than 700 ships in service worldwide, including a third of container ships. LNG has become the most used alternative fuel in the maritime sector, despite the many critical studies highlighting its ecological limits.
Redefine the model of gigantism …
Where complexity is historically as a guarantee of technological modernity, the relative simplicity of sailing seems out of topic. However, as mentioned by ADEME, “the dominant imagination at the origin of our modern lifestyles is today unbearable since it jeopardizes the habitability of the planet”.
To get out of this “fossilization” of imaginary, questioning the size of maritime transport ships becomes legitimate.
Super-containers have become the emblems of modern maritime industry based on fossil fuels. Artifacts that meet the standards of “the economy of gigantism”, they embody an ideal of peace, carried by the “sweet trade” and its school of liberal thought, and an ideal of abundance: their capacity of transport has been multiplied by more than 20 in forty years.
However, this model of gigantism is now questioned. Often, secondary ports are not equipped on the logistics level to accommodate megaCargos, which sometimes make more than 400 meters, which represents a risk for infrastructure.
Conversely, sailing boats are on average between 90 and 150 meters. Let us quote, for example, the Windcoop project and its 91 meters, or the Neoline project, considered one of the longest sailing cargo ships in the world, and its 136 meters.
Handwood transport has so far aimed at high added value products such as wine, coffee or chocolate. But the arrival of increasingly large sailing cargo cargo. Williwaw 160 meters, announced by the company Zéphyr & Borée, increases cargo volumes, diversify and reduce current costs by economies of scale. The sector thus opens to the transport of vehicles for example.
… And that of hypervitiate
The wind does not blow all the time, maritime sailing transport reformulates the paradigm of the high controlled speed, which appears as an energetic dead end: the faster we go, the more we consume. As an indication, the majority of current container ships have a speed of 15 to 23 knots (28 to 43 km/h), while the 136-meter neoline sailing cargo will display a reduced speed of 11 knots (about 20 km/h).
The resurgence of maritime sailing transport also raises the question of social time, by rethinking our relationship to the territory and our rhythms of life. Moreover, unlike the fantasies that have emerged in the world of terrestrial or air transport with, for example, hyperloop or supersonic plane, speed is not a primordial question for maritime transport, the issue of punctuality being much more important.
As such, the ambition of autonomy of sailing cargos (installation of loading/unloading cranes on board to gain fluidity, opening of secondary commercial lines outside the major international congested roads, etc.) would question the hegemony of the thermal mega carriers in this speed race. Reducing the speed of ships is also a measure in favor of marine biodiversity, since this decreases the underwater noise and the risks of collision with cetaceans.
A symbiosis between low-tech And high-tech
With the revolution of digital tools available on board, real -time simulations allow you to follow the best trajectories. Deploying or folding a sail is now automatically done. These new sailing cargos are concentrates of technologies, and although they operate a millennial technique, they also rely on contemporary tools, like AI and satellite forecasts which make it possible to optimize trajectories. Mature and proven technologies from the aeronautical sector and water sports (carbon materials) are integrated into the development of new sailboats.
Maritime sailing transport is part of a shock of speed. The model of deceleration (also in the image of the airships in the air transport of goods) is increasingly rubbing shoulders with that of high speed. Similarly, the sector is experiencing a shock from innovative design, where the low-tech (sailing) will associate with the high-tech.
The Change of scale challenge
However, the uncertainty and the risk associated with the pioneering character of these first modern cargoos make it by nature the lifting of funds more delicate.
In order to ensure the economic profitability of the project, the promoters of sailing cargoos must find customers (chargers or logisticians) who engage in a number of annual containers for a generally long enough duration. The process of legitimizing sailing transport is based on these first customers who bet on the sector, among which we can find start-ups/SMEs but also large groups.
The active competition of these first customers is therefore crucial, as is the support of public actors. The slightest fuel cost must make it possible to amortize the additional investment specific to the construction of new generation sailing cargo ships. The process of legitimation and marketing innovation obliges to juggle continuously between a romantic imagination conveyed by sailing boats within the general public and a pragmatic technical discourse of financial profitability.
A territorial and citizen reappropriation of exchanges
Finally, the paradigm shift remains to be carried out first on the side of citizens and consumers. The additional cost linked to the use of sailing-the size of the thermal container ships allows economies of scale-must still be able to be reflected in the price of goods. A decarbonized evolution of maritime transport will be for market reasons and more than technological citizens.
The evolution of uses and mentalities is therefore a structuring element to constitute a real market. The transport of goods remaining an opaque sector from a social and environmental point of view, the sail could give it new ethics. As such, many bike shipowners have chosen a fair remuneration of their sailors.
In 2014, the navigator Isabelle Autissier recalled that the sea is a vector of the imaginary where “the sailor becomes the standard bearer of a more true and more desirable humanity”. Like wind turbines (with all the controversies they cause), the resurgence of masts of ships therefore presents itself as a strong landscape symbol which restores the maritime world (cargoos being the great invisibles of globalization) and transport.
Knowing that the lifespan of a current commercial ship is on average twenty-five years, the boats under construction today are those which will reduce emissions from the maritime sector in the future. Thus, although the energy future of maritime transportation is multi -technical, a competition is underway around the imagination of progress.
With an unwavering passion for local news, Christopher leads our editorial team with integrity and dedication. With over 20 years’ experience, he is the backbone of Wouldsayso, ensuring that we stay true to our mission to inform.
