Container shipping is a big deal. It’s been an amazing success story in global trade and pivotal to making shipping cheaper and cheaper. It’s not too much to say that it’s been a big part of bringing people around the world out of poverty. But unsurprisingly, moving those metal boxes around takes energy.
The water side of the equation is the actually hard problem, although it’s not nearly as hard as many make it out to be. Ships carrying 24,000 containers blazing across oceans at 24 knots use a lot of fuel. But there are innumerable ways to reduce the energy required and obvious replacements for sources of energy.