Fun looking at China and seeing plans for the future, while here, it’s nothing but grift for the foreseeable future.
Port electrification follows a predictable sequence. The first stage replaces diesel cranes, trucks, and yard equipment with electric systems. The second extends to tugs and harbor craft. The third, which is now underway in China, reaches inland and short-sea vessels. The fourth will see ports functioning as full energy hubs, feeding deep-sea hybrids and stabilizing regional grids. Every stage builds on the one before it. Once the ground vehicles and cranes switch to electric drive, high-capacity chargers and energy management systems are already in place. Those same assets can serve harbor craft and ships. Electrification propagates by infrastructure reuse.
The Yangtze River has become a living demonstration of this process. It connects the interior manufacturing centers of Chongqing, Wuhan, and Yichang with the export hubs of Shanghai, Nanjing, and Ningbo. Along its length, the physical river has been matched by a set of electrical arteries. Two of them, the Changji–Guquan and Hami–Chongqing UHVDC transmission lines, deliver more than 30 TWh of renewable power each year from the deserts and plateaus of the west to the dense industrial east. Together they provide up to 8 GW of clean capacity directly into the Yangtze corridor. These ultra-high-voltage direct current lines are the spine of a new energy geography, making clean electrons available where cargo and industry already cluster. Without that grid backbone, even the most efficient electric ship would be an isolated experiment.
There’s tremendous irony regarding one point …
This is against a backdrop of radical change in shipping volumes. 40% of all tonnage is of fossil fuels and all are in structural decline. Another 15% is raw iron ore, also in structure decline. Population growth is slowing and the global population is expected to peak between 2050 and 2070. While container shipping will continue to grow, it won’t be growing nearly as fast as bulks decline.