How to rehabilitate old oil supertankers

How to rehabilitate old oil supertankers Getty Images The question of what to do with the world's oil tanker fleet will become more pressing as the world tries to wean itself off fossil fuels The enormous ships that ferry crude oil around the world embody the fossil fuel era and its legacy of pollution. Getty Images As the world moves towards more renewable energy sources and non-fossil fuel based products, there are some looking to find new jobs for oil tankers to do In a world where climate change poses a very real threat – one that could force us to wean ourselves off our fossil fuel habit – the diminishing demand for oil tankers could produce new problems. All that steel could be cut up and reused, or we could repurpose them to make wave energy – Florent Trarieux “There are thousands of oil tankers currently in operation and hundreds reaching the end of their service lives every year,” says Trarieux. “All that steel could be cut up and reused, or we could repurpose them to make wave energy.” Getty Images Oil tankers sent for scrapping are often run aground on beaches in Bangladesh where they are dismantled by hand by poorly paid unskilled workers Converting these vessels into waveships could be a tempting alternative to scrapping them. “Transforming old oil tankers, used to ship millions of gallons of oil around the world, into a potential clean energy source is yet another example of the UK leading the global shift to clean growth,” says Claire Perry, energy and clean growth minister in the UK.