alt Hacker News> It removes a larger share of the ocean work and the fuel burned to do that work.
Sure, but as long as ratio of fuel moved:fuel used is good enough, people won't care (as demonstrated by historical data). This isn't an argument that leads to change. For those not already convinced of the climate crisis, you'll need to lean on economics.
That is orthogonal to the point. Shipping is considered a hard industry to reduce CO2 emissions, like aviation, but unlike aviation, 50% of the distance ships are traveling are just delivering fuel. So solving non-shipping fuel use solves nearly half of shipping fuel use. The remaining uses of shipping are also much more tractable to electrify.