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The fight against climate change goes through the reduction of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. And one way to reduce it is to replace the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil or gas. Can you imagine transporting goods on sailboats? Well, a French company has been doing it for more than ten years. With 64,000 nautical miles traveled, 1,500 tons of CO2 have been saved.
“This idea was born from a double observation. On the one hand, offshore wind is abundant, frequent and for a few years it has been predictable. On the other hand, maritime transport is highly interdependent on oil and it is very difficult to do without carbon for technological and commercial reasons,” explains Diana Mesa from Bogotá, co-founder of this company called Towt.
Seeing this panorama, they set out to create a responsible and ecological transport of goods without diesel. The first ship they chartered with their partner Guillaume Le Grand was in 2011. It was a Dutch vessel called ‘Three Men’, from 1943. They transported organic beers from the Exe estuary, in the United Kingdom, to the French region of Brittany.
Since then they have transported Colombian coffee, rum, teas, wines and chocolate as it was done in the old days, only under sail, with the force of the wind and without a motor. “These are routes that are historical and have been used for a long time. For example, for coffee the route is related to the trade winds, which is like a highway on the high seas. Last year we transported coffee from Colombia that we loaded in December and was unloaded in March in Bordeaux,” explains Mesa.
Transporting goods on sailboats is slower and more expensive. Mesa acknowledges that it is a significant cost because they do not have the capacity to transport a large quantity, although he stresses that the transport costs a few cents for a package of coffee.
Since 2015, Towt has been developing a larger sailing ship that will allow them to reduce costs, a vessel that will go three times faster and with a capacity 30 times greater: “These new ships are going to have an auxiliary engine because we believe that our transport has to be reliable, we also need it for legal reasons because without a motor we cannot go to certain ports”.
An engine that, although in the future it will be powered by an electric motor with clean energy, for now it will run on diesel, as Mesa admits.
Today, 90% of international trade is carried out through the merchant marine and maritime transport is the second sector that emits the most carbon dioxide in the world, after the generation of electricity.
“It is true that our initiative may seem like a grain of sand or a drop in the ocean, but we want to develop a fleet and thus be able to guarantee frequent transport. We believe that by 2050 it will be possible to reduce 30% of carbon dioxide emissions of maritime transport,” he told Escala in Paris.
They work with several Latin American companies, especially in Colombia and Mexico. “These are companies that produce with traditional methods and that do not use any chemicals and that seek to make the entire chain carbon-free,” explains Mesa.
The company also offers the possibility of transporting passengers, although at the moment the price is quite high, about 150 euros per day. “It’s something that the other positions also do, but we propose an experience with activities to learn to navigate, a slow experience,” he clarifies.
Another of the projects that Towt has on the table is to offer scientific residences to collaborate in maritime observation and in the measurement of hydrocarbons in the sea.
Towt has announced at the Climate Conference, COP27 in Egypt, that it will reinforce its plan to reduce CO2 emissions by strongly increasing the capacity of its fleet between 2023 and 2028.
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