meh…this is just reprinting their press release: neoline.eu/…/neoliner-origin-70-fuel-savings-and-…

it sucks, because it’d be great if it was more feasible, but anytime you see news about wind-powered cargo ships a “this is greenwashing” alarm should go off in your head

that 70% number in the headline sounds really promising, right?

The 136 metre roll on roll off vessel, which entered service in October 2025, completed nine commercial round trips, sailed more than 62,000 nautical miles and transported 12,063 tonnes of cargo during its first year.

one ship, 9 trips, 12,000 tons of cargo

meanwhile, Panamax carries ~50,000 tons, and neo-Panamax carries ~120,000 tons. in one trip.

so you build 10 of these ships, sail them for a year, and it replaces one trip by one neo-Panamax ship.

except, it doesn’t even really do that. the press release talks about the ship being “roll-on / roll-off” like it’s a feature. which it can be, for certain niches.

but modern cargo ships all use big stacks of shipping containers, and handle them at ports using giant overhead cranes. that’s effectively the worldwide standard.

and ships with huge sailing masts are either impossible or very difficult to make work with those overhead cranes. so this isn’t just a question of building new wind-powered cargo ships, it’s also retrofitting every existing cargo port in the world to handle them.

is all of that technically possible? sure.

but we have 12 years to prevent a climate change catastrophe…according to a report published 8 years ago. “check it out guys, we built one sailboat” just ain’t gonna cut it.