When the US-Israel-Iran war rattles oil routes and sends stocks linked to oil prices in chaos, we remember how vulnerable freight really is. From Houthis blowing up shipping containers in the Red Sea to the IRGC regime stopping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest instability tied to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz has again exposed a truth that should have been obvious years ago: moving fuel, food, medicine and industrial goods with diesel trucks from source points around the world is not only dirty and expensive, it is strategically brittle.

A single chokepoint can raise costs across continents. A single delay can ripple through ports, warehouses and supermarket shelves. If there is a serious transportation lesson from this latest era of conflict, but also from the COVID era and the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war, it is that freight has to become more electric, more automated, more distributed and much safer.

The most visible symbol of that future is the Tesla Semi, but it is only one part of a wider shift that includes platooning, electric road trains, tunnel logistics (the Boring Company) and autonomous overnight freight. Tesla says their new Semi can travel up to 500 miles on a single charge, potentially charge itself, use just 1.7 kWh per mile, and recover up to 60% of range in 30 minutes using Tesla’s dedicated Semi chargers. These are no longer vague promises from a concept vehicle. They are operational logistics numbers, and they matter because freight does not need novelty. It needs reliability, lower costs, cleaner energy and fewer funerals on the road.

The real story is not just battery range. It is what electric trucks can do to the geometry of freight itself. Electric heavy vehicles are better suited to repeatable, software-managed routes than diesel trucks, especially on corridors between ports, warehouses, data centers, industrial parks and distribution hubs. They can charge during planned dwell time, brake regeneratively in traffic, and eventually move in synchronized convoys. That is where an old Green Prophet idea suddenly feels new again.

Years ago Green Prophet wrote about road trains as a way to reduce energy use and pollution on major corridors. Back then it sounded slightly utopian. Today it looks practical. Road trains are already used in places like Australia for long-haul freight, where multiple trailers are linked in controlled formation. The next version is more sophisticated: platooned electric trucks using software, automation and vehicle-to-vehicle coordination to move with less drag, better braking and tighter control. If war has reminded us how fragile fuel supply can be, then electrified road trains offer a direct answer. They move goods using power that can increasingly come from domestic grids rather than imported oil.

“Well said,” says Mark Russell, from Eco Trilogy, “Unfortunately, every new idea introduced in the West right now seems to be met with “that’ll never work” instead of “we can make this happen.” Somewhere along the way we’ve shifted from practical, solutions-focused thinking to a culture that resists improvement.

“Healthy debate is one thing—I can respect that. What’s harder to accept is the deliberate misinformation and outright falsehoods that cloud real progress. Take electric motors for example—they’re vastly more efficient than diesel, and that’s only the beginning of what’s possible when we choose to move forward instead of hold back.”

This is not just a climate story. It is also a safety story, and trucking badly needs one. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 6,050 large trucks and buses were involved in fatal crashes in 2022. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety notes that most deaths in large truck crashes are not truck occupants but people in smaller vehicles. Canadians have experienced this too well. A recent high-profile case is about an Indian truck driver with dozens of traffic offenses who wiped out an entire hockey team. Truckers themselves, though happy for the jobs that require unskilled labor, lead to back problems, opiode use and addiction. My brother-in-law got addicted to crack on this path. But in society, the danger comes from mass, height, visibility problems and human error. Trucks are essential to modern life, but the diesel freight system we tolerate is still one of the most physically unforgiving machines in daily public use. If you live in rural areas in Canada for instance, it’s fairly common to hear stories of people who have been hit by logging trucks out on old lonely logging roads.

That context matters when people dismiss autonomous or semi-autonomous freight as “experimental.” The current system is experimental too. It is just old enough that we stopped calling it that. Human fatigue, poor training, distracted driving, mechanical neglect and congested road conditions are still doing terrible work every day. The case for electric freight is not that software is magic. It is that electric and digitally managed fleets can reduce some of the oldest failure points in trucking if they are deployed honestly and regulated properly.

There is strong evidence that advanced safety systems already help. A study highlighted by the IIHS found that forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking greatly reduce crash risk for large trucks. Another transportation safety summary reported that forward collision warning reduced rear-end crash rates for large trucks by 44% and automatic emergency braking cut them by 41%. These are not futuristic gains. They are available gains, and electric trucks are especially well positioned to integrate them deeply because they are software-first vehicles from the start.

This is where the Tesla Semi has real promise beyond the brand mythology. A truck that is built around sensors, cameras, digital controls, active safety systems and fleet-level telemetry is not just a cleaner truck. It is a more governable truck. That matters because freight safety is often less about one great driver and more about whether the entire system is designed to reduce bad decisions. Electric fleets can be routed to avoid dangerous congestion, scheduled for lower-risk windows and monitored continuously for maintenance, speed, route adherence and braking behavior.

Canada has already shown what happens when freight systems become too loose and too dependent on low-cost labor with weak oversight. Ontario authorities suspended truckers’ licences after uncovering dishonest testing and training practices in the commercial driving pipeline, mainly through Indian and Pakistani new immigrants, a scandal that has raised concerns about how unqualified drivers can end up operating very large vehicles on public roads. The report in TruckNews made clear that the issue was not theoretical.

There have also been wider crackdowns in western Canada. In Alberta, regulators shut down unsafe truck driver training schools and targeted carriers linked to poor safety practices, according to another TruckNews report. This is where the so-called Indian trucker scam story belongs: not in xenophobic shorthand, but in a larger, documented failure of training quality, licensing integrity and freight oversight. The public safety issue is real and the solution is better standards, better enforcement and eventually fewer opportunities for dangerous human error in the first place.

Electric and autonomous freight systems can help close that gap. A truck that is digitally supervised from depot to destination is much harder to fake than a paper credential. Its route, braking profile, charging pattern, maintenance logs and safety events are all visible. Its blind spots can be monitored more effectively. Its lane keeping can be assisted. Its speed can be constrained. Its night operation can be managed more intelligently than traditional diesel trucking, where too much depends on exhausted people trying to survive punishing schedules.

Night freight, in particular, deserves more attention. Most people think of night driving as inherently more dangerous, and for tired human drivers that is often true. But electric freight paired with high-grade sensors, automatic braking, lane support and controlled corridors changes that equation. Roads are less congested at night. Temperatures are lower and  delivery windows are easier to manage. A future fleet of electric trucks moving through dedicated logistics lanes or semi-autonomous convoy corridors after midnight may actually be one of the safest ways to move goods through and between cities of Boston and New York. As my design prof friend Tom Klinkowstein said while driving through Soho on his electric BMW, “wheeeeee.”

That is especially important in hot countries and regions vulnerable to fuel disruption. In the Gulf, for instance, the logic is already visible. Green Prophet recently covered how Etihad Rail is using solar power at a freight terminal, which points to a larger truth: logistics is beginning to decouple from diesel. Rail, electric trucking and distributed renewable power can work together to make freight less exposed to global oil shocks. If you can move a growing share of cargo using electricity generated at home, then conflict in a shipping chokepoint matters a little less.

And then there is the tunnel idea. Elon Musk’s Boring Company is usually treated as either a curiosity or a vanity project, but its freight implications are worth taking seriously. The company explicitly positions itself around transportation, utility and freight tunnels, and Green Prophet recently looked at its proposed Dubai Loop. Most public discussion focuses on moving people, but the more consequential long game may be underground logistics around ports, airports, industrial districts and city delivery corridors.

Imagine what that means in practical terms. Instead of forcing every container, parcel or pallet through surface congestion, cities could build dedicated electric freight arteries below grade. Not for everything, but for enough high-frequency, high-value freight to change the economics of last-mile logistics. Tunnels are expensive, but so are collisions, delays, diesel pollution, road wear and lost time. If electrified trucking is the first phase of cleaner freight, then freight tunneling may become the second.

There is also a strategic military and civil defense logic to all this. When surface infrastructure is exposed, tunnel logistics and electrified transport corridors become more than just sustainability projects. They become resilience infrastructure. A society that can move food, medicine, construction materials and even emergency fuel with less dependence on imported diesel is not only cleaner: it is harder to destabilize.

There will be labor consequences and they should not be brushed aside. Better electric logistics will almost certainly mean fewer traditional long-haul driving jobs over time, especially on repetitive corridor freight. Some of those jobs will be replaced by fleet management, remote operations, charging infrastructure, maintenance, software supervision and tunnel logistics, but not all of them. That is a real social cost and governments should be planning for it now. But it should not be used as an excuse to defend a freight model that is dangerous, polluting and geopolitically fragile.

The bigger truth is simple. If the world wants safer freight after the Iran war, it should stop talking only about oil supply and start talking about transport design around renewable energy nodes and battery storage stations. Electric trucks like the Tesla Semi, road-train logic, managed night freight, autonomous convoying and freight tunnels are not fringe ideas anymore. They are pieces of a practical, lower-risk logistics future.

The old diesel model gave us pollution, dependency, fatigue and too many deaths on the road. The next freight era should be quieter, cleaner and much less lethal. That would be a technological upgrade worth taking seriously.

The big question I have is if the first versions will include sleeper cabins. Can a trucker just put the vehicle on automatic mode and write poetry from his cabin behind the wheel?

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Although paper and wood are considered natural, their transportation cannot always be described as such. What logistics solutions should you pay attention to to work toward sustainable transportation?

Green transportation starts with green sourcing

The wood and paper industry around the world may be subject to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) chain of custody certification. Certification by this organization confirms that a product comes from a certified forest and meets strict environmental requirements. While it is not necessary to have this document to operate in these industries, it can bring many business benefits, especially given the increased environmental awareness of today’s society.

Evaluating products before they are awarded FSC certification covers a variety of areas, including the transportation of raw materials. Offering a sustainable wood and paper transportation service can therefore establish business partnerships with investors who are keen to confirm that the process takes place with minimal environmental impact.

Challenges in transporting paper and wood

It is worth bearing in mind that cargo consisting of paper, wood, and their derivatives is one of the particularly vulnerable groups. The biggest threat here is water, as products in these categories exhibit high hygroscopicity. Contact of wood with water threatens to make it damp and increase pest activity. In the context of paper and cellulose, this primarily means swelling or mold.

From the carrier’s point of view, it comes down to the need to create the right conditions for transportation. In order for the cargo to reach its destination in an undamaged condition, it must be enclosed in packaging that is resistant to temperature fluctuations and moisture. Solutions must also be implemented to control the conditions inside the trailer or container containing the paper or cellulose. This is done with a so-called active shipping system, which allows real-time monitoring of conditions in the transport space.

Contrary to appearances, reeled paper is characterized by a much heavier weight than one might think. From this appearance, the carrier is subject to the obligation to properly secure it for transport. Strong loading straps and paper liner systems with longitudinal rails and wedges that lock the bales in one position prove to be a frequent choice here.

When it comes to transporting timber, the biggest challenge turns out to be the so-called “long timber”, i.e. lumber of an above-standard length. Its transport by road must be carried out using specialized equipment, including, for example, an extended profile trailer with an extended load or a telescopic trailer. Special attention must also be paid to packing the packages safely and loading the cargo space evenly with it. If the cargo qualifies as oversized, it is also necessary to obtain the required permits.

Logistics solutions in the service of sustainable paper and wood transportation

Given the need to maintain controlled conditions during the transportation and storage of paper, pulp, and wood, environmental goals are furthered by planning the transportation accordingly. Any change of means of transportation or temporary holding in a warehouse involves an additional human factor and the powering of systems to maintain moisture and temperature at a certain level.

It is therefore necessary to optimize the route in such a way that the cargo gets from A to B in the shortest possible time, excluding downtime that is not necessary. For this reason, door-to-door transportation by an experienced logistics partner will prove to be the most environmentally friendly here. AsstrA’s road transport should meet the expectations of even the most demanding investor.

It is also worth making sure that eco-friendly solutions are used for packaging and securing cargo. Where stretch film can be dispensed with without harming the products being transported, it should be excluded. In other cases, it is recommended to keep it to a minimum. Modern cargo securing solutions, such as dunnage bags (useful for filling the space between paper bales) or spreader bars and rods, will also prove helpful.

In the context of sustainable transportation, it is also important to remember that vehicles used for transporting wood and paper are exposed to harsh working conditions. As a result, their technical condition should be inspected more frequently than for vehicles handling lighter loads. The more efficiently a fleet operates, the lower the carbon footprint it generates.

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Every business has a carbon footprint. An organization, in its full operation, is bound to leave behind a carbon footprint. This, in fact, is an inevitable reality. But there are certainly a few ways to reduce an organization’s carbon footprint to some extent.

Reducing the carbon footprint is good for the environment and requires adhering to complaints issued by various organizations. One way you can reduce your organization’s carbon footprint is by selecting sustainable freight shipping. But this is just one of several ways. Let’s get into an in-depth discussion of how businesses can reduce their carbon footprint. 

Choosing a Sustainable Freight Shipping Process

According to a study, transportation and logistics contribute to one-fifth of the world’s total carbon emissions. This trend doesn’t stop here. Almost 30% of this number is contributed by road freight transportation. This is why it is important for businesses to choose a freight shipping structure that is sustainable and reduces the carbon footprint. For instance, one can opt for a shared truckload model, which is designed to reduce 40% of carbon emissions. In STL, the shipper only pays for the space they need. This is different from a full truckload, in which you need to hire the entire truck. This means various shippers consolidate their goods into one truck, reducing carbon emissions.

Implement a Circular Economy

Before discussing how to implement a circular economy model in your supply chain, let’s define the term. A circular economy is a production and consumption approach that aims to reduce waste, utilize fewer resources in the supply chain, and use materials, tools, and machines for a longer duration of time.

Let us understand the circular economy with an example. The food industry is one of the top supply chains and is responsible for 50% of the total carbon emissions. One way the industry can reduce its carbon footprint is by reducing packaging usage and waste. Organizations working in the food industry can design their food packages so that they are easy to reuse. 

Choosing Electric and Hybrid Vehicles for Logistics

When electric vehicles were first tested in the 1930s, who thought they would play such an important role in curbing the carbon footprint of the supply chain? The freight industry is also among the top eight supply chains that contribute to 50% of carbon emissions. To reduce the environmental impact of operations, many shipping providers are opting for electric and hybrid vehicles for logistics. 

Choosing a Sustainably Structured Logistics System

In addition to using electric and hybrid vehicles for logistics, there are numerous other ways to reduce carbon footprint. One of them is choosing a sustainable logistics system. How? Here are some ways: 

• Optimizing the utilization of truck space: If you are shipping your products by road, make sure you are maximizing the utilization of truck space. This way, you will be able to ship a larger volume of goods in one single consignment. 
• Optimizing the route: Optimizing the route to reduce the need for terminals reduces the cost and duration of transit. 

Implementing Proper Waste Management Strategies

Efficient waste management strategies in your supply chain distinguish you from your competitors. Organizations that aim to make a profit while also working for a noble cause are always appreciated by their peers and partners. 

Proper waste management includes encouraging your customers to recycle the final products. In other cases, it also means being able to recycle the raw materials that were used in the production process. 

Conclusion

Managing your organization’s carbon footprint has many environmental benefits. This approach also makes your operation cost-effective. 

By determining the route that leads to fewer carbon emissions, you reduce the cost of fuel and freight transportation. By opting for proper waste management, you ensure that not a single byproduct of your supply chain goes to waste. 

Moreover, when you choose these approaches, you establish yourself as a leader in your niche and get recognition as a business that gives importance to environmental well-being. This helps open up new partnership opportunities that you have never thought of. 

The post How To Reduce the Carbon Footprint of Your Supply Chain? appeared first on Green Prophet.

A 3,300-year-old cargo with hundreds of ancient pots was discovered 60 miles off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea. Antiquities researchers say this is the world’s most ancient ship to be found in the world in the deep seas, proving that ancient mariners possessed ancient tech and wisdom to traverse the sea without a line of sight to the coast.

The ship’s cargo was found during a standard seafloor sweep by the natural gas company Energean, operating in the East Mediterranean – and now working with Israel’s Antiquities Authority to physically extract and bring up sample vessels from the ship. The contents were positively identified as Late Bronze Age Canaanite storage vessels.

Energean -a leading E&P natural gas company operates the Karish, Karish North, Katlan and Tanin offshore natural gas fields near Israel.

“The ship seems to have sunk in crisis, either due to a storm or to an attempted piracy attack – a well-known occurrence in the Late Bronze Age,” says Jacob Sharvit, Head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Marine Unit.

“This is a world-class history-changing discovery: This find reveals to us as never before the ancient mariners’ navigational skills – capable of traversing the Mediterranean Sea without a line of sight to any coast. From this geographical point, only the horizon is visible all around. To navigate they probably used the celestial bodies, by taking sightings and angles of the sun and star positions,” he says.

Ancient civilizations like the Egyptians, Minoans, Mesopotamians, Greeks, and Vikings relied on the stars for navigation. By observing the movements of specific stars and constellations, early navigators were able to estimate their latitude and navigate along the coastlines and rivers.

“It turned out to be a sensational discovery, far beyond what we could imagine,” says Karnit Bahartan, Environmental Lead at Energean.

The company’s technicians planned a unique, complex operation and even built a special tool to enable extracting artifacts with minimal risk of damage to the entire assemblage.

A robot sent to investigate estimates the ship is about 14 yards long. The muddy bottom conceals a second layer of vessels, and it seems that wooden beams of the ship are also buried within the mud, say the researchers.

“The vessel type identified in the cargo was designed as the most efficient means of transporting relatively cheap and mass-produced products such as oil, wine and other agricultural products such as fruit. Finding such a great quantity of amphorae on board one single ship is testimony to significant commercial ties between their country of origin and the ancient Near Eastern lands on the Mediterranean coast,” Shavit adds.

Only two other shipwrecks with cargo are known from the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean Sea – the boat from Cape Gelidonya and the Uluburun boat; both found off the Turkish coast. Yet both of those shipwrecks were found relatively near the shore, and were accessible using normal diving equipment.

Based on these two finds, the academic assumption until now was that trade in that time was executed by safely flitting from port to port, hugging the coastline within eye contact. The discovery of this boat now changes the understanding of ancient mariner abilities: It is the very first to be found at such a great distance with no line of sight to any landmass.

Energean (LSE:ENOG, FTSE 250, TASE:אנאג, TA-35) is a London-based independent E&P company focused on developing resources in the Mediterranean. The multi country 1bn+ boe portfolio is 80% gas weighted, producing up to 150k boepd. Energean is committed to sustainable development and to be a net zero emitter by 2050.

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Stuff. We’ve all got it. Unless we’re from the Nomad class, we’ve got stuff to move and ship. Lighter stuff can be packed in a small envelope or box and sent in the mail. Just about everything else from printers to mattresses to books and clothes. We can’t send it over high speed Internet, yet. That stuff moves around our lives inefficiently. If you have the smarts and social network you can get your stuff moved around for free by asking your buddy a favor. But who has the time and friends for that?

My biggest problem when shipping stuff around is finding the company who can do it. I can spend hours trying to find a company that can handle what I want to ship. The price? Usually something completely outrageous that I don’t even bother. Should it be like that?

And remember the fad when cargo biking your stuff around cities, even for moving day, became all the rage? We love human-powered shipping, and Summer, one of our buddies in Tel Aviv runs a one-woman show move-anything company with her little van. But eco-friendly stuff-movers like Summer can’t scale. And cargo and courier biking, while romantic, cannot solve the problem of shipping between cities. Or loads of trucks and couriers going to one drop-off, returning empty handed.

The UK’s Shiply has the answer. The company has developed software that now links with massive companies like eBay to solve inefficiencies in the shipping industry. The vision is to be the most sustainable transport system in the world, using any system it takes, as long as it’s the most efficient one to get from point A to point B. It works like an auction.

Here’s how it works: Have something to move? Create an account and list what you want to transport, saying how much you can pay and when you need it delivered. The item goes into the auction. Expect to pay less for being flexible on the dates. Transport companies and people bid on deal. Transactions are then enabled by a fee paid for by the bid winner. Wait for your delivery!

Ways your stuff can be moved: by bicycle, by private car, by boat, by motorcycle, by furniture movers, by handle-with-care freight companies and many, many more.

The results for our planet we love:

• Stuff that we love can be loved longer by other people or by us again, but in new places
• Greenhouse gases for shipping can be cut at least in half if transport vehicles are in use in both directions
• New channels of operators such as biking couriers, van companies, Uber drivers, taxies, and small businesses can access the supply chain, previously limited to big shipping and courier companies
• Prices for shipping can be drastically lowered
• Shipping becomes democratized, and available for the masses which is good if you are starting a new business or sending stuff to your kid in college

The company was founded in 2008, and within 2 short years had 17,500 companies listed as transport services, clearly greasing the wheels of a very outdated and inefficient industry.

Go Shiply! We love you.

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The UAE is well-known for its ginormous skyscrapers and oil-guzzling lifestyle, and increasingly Abu Dhabi is making a name for its eco-consciousness, but it can’t be said that our Gulf friends are the go-to people for eco-friendly buildings.

Which is why the UK paper this is Leicestershire has grabbed the following story by its rather slippery horns. Why, they wonder, would the Rutland Primary Care Trust spend £2.3 million on a building made in the UK, rather than one from Europe, and why, six months after its expected installation, is that building still at the Essex container port? En route from the UAE Modcon factory to St. Luke’s Hospital in Market Harborough, where it would have been the new day case unit, the mysterious building became “cosmetically” damaged. Despite earnest efforts by its journalists, the paper was somewhat unsuccessful at getting the Trust to provide succinct details.

In the meantime, £2.3 million of taxpayer money is potentially in pieces. Because of the lack of answers, the paper began to ask a series of other questions.

Why, for example, award the bid to a company in the Middle East when local builders are starved for work?

Roger Crundwell, a partner for Tuke Manton, a London-based architects’ firm which has designed prefabricated units for several private hospitals, told the paper he had never heard of anyone “going that far for one of those before.”

He added that normally these things come from Europe. Germany is said to construct eco-friendly prefab buildings with a speed, tolerance, and reliability that makes them, not the Middle East, the first choice.

Professor David Dernie, head of De Montfort University‘s school of architecture, has a different perspective. He explains that prefab building has come a long way, but that Britain has not caught up. This may explain why local construction companies were not commissioned, though the UAE still seems too far to make the shipping worthwhile.

The Trust insists that the company (which was not available for comment) won the bid through a competitive tendering process that complies with the stiffest European Union procurement legislation. Even so, there are signs that perhaps this was not the best building for the job.

According to this is Leicestershire:

The unit wasn’t going to meet privacy regulations and the contamination area had to be “improved”. Modifications had to be made, which led to the delay. Was that down to a flaw in the design brief, a cock-up on Modcon’s part or new legislation overtaking the plans? We don’t know. We asked the trust whether any of its staff or any of its external advisers had been to see any examples of Modcon’s work first hand. A press officer said that could only be answered as a Freedom of Information request – which can take up to a month to turn around. She didn’t have that information to hand, she said, and didn’t have time to find it.

While the paper may be blowing the story out of proportion, it is worthwhile to consider how globalization enables trade between distant nations and the subsequent environmental impact. A European building may not have been cheaper, economically, but certainly a considerable swath of emissions may have been saved on the shipping bill.

Now taxpayers are lumped with an expensive broken building; and getting the UAE to pay could be a tricky thing to do.

:: this is Leicestershire

More on green building techniques in the Middle East:

Abu Dhabi To Achieve All Five Green Building Pearls

Learn Permaculture & Green Building Techniques in Israel

Jordan’s Princess Samaya Praises Kingdom’s First LEED Building

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