Zero emission is a lie. You are simply shifting the emissions up or down the chain. Batteries are horrible if you look at how they are produced. Wind farms too. Diesel is better than electrical when you look at total cost vs benefits.
Over the last decade the port of SF has put in lots of effort to electrify the waterfront. What does that mean? It means that they put in huge electrical infrastructure to deliver huge amounts of electricity to the waterfront and piers along the sf waterfront. Why would you want to do that? Several reasons. One is that cruise ships dock there. Normally when cruise ships are docked they still need to run their engines to power the ships huge energy needs. At the SF cruise terminal they don't - The ship is powered by the dock side infrastructure.
Back to the sea change ferry. It's powered by a zero emissions hydrogen fuel cell. The SF port has devised a brilliant infrastructure to support it where there is a floating fuel dock that is moored at a pier and takes advantage of the aforementioned power infrastructure. The floating fuel dock takes electricity in and disassociate hydrogen from bay water. It then transfers it to the ferry when it needs to be refueled.
I know what you're going to say - but that power is generated by non renewable sources in the first place. It's not, it's all powered by the hydroelectric dam at Hetch Hetchy.
So my friend, we have an example of an end to end zero emissions transportation source about to be realized.
There are numerous developments happening all up and down the chain to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Yes some parts will take longer than others, some will have unintended or ignored secondary negative effects, and some will happen faster and better than expected.
Diesel and ICE in general is not going away over night and there are efficiency developments happening with those technologies as well. It seems foolish to just drop any focus on things like solar, batteries, wind, and EVs because it hasn't yet met some standard of perfection.
