FUEL CONTROL: New rules forbid ships from burning highly polluting bunker fuel in U.S. waters.
Image: flickr/mikebaird
Landmark U.S. EPA regulations to reduce air pollution from ships off the East and West coasts of North America came into effect yesterday, receiving a swell of approval from environmental groups.
The North American Emission Control Area, or ECA, will reduce harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter that can contribute to climate change and negatively affect the health of coastal communities. The EPA estimates that using cleaner marine fuels and engines will avoid up to 14,000 premature deaths each year by 2020 and up to 31,000 premature deaths per year by 2030.
"This is an extremely important regulation. It's one of the most effective air pollution regulations the EPA has ever promulgated," said David Marshall, senior counsel with the Clean Air Task Force, who participated in negotiations on the rule. "Without these regulations, these oceangoing ships burn pretty much the dirtiest fuel on the planet."
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) approved the United States and Canada's application for an ECA in 2010, under an international air pollution control program enacted in 2005. With the regulation now in effect, North America joins the Baltic and North sea regions in limiting sulfur emissions.
The ECA requires that ships traveling within 200 nautical miles of the non-Arctic U.S. and Canadian coasts use fuels with a sulfur content of 10,000 parts per million or less, falling to a 1,000 ppm sulfur limit by 2015. The rule will also achieve an 80 percent reduction in smog-forming oxides of nitrogen by 2016.
The sulfur content of bunker fuels used today by most large ships is 1,800 times higher -- about 27,000 ppm -- than the 15 ppm of sulfur content allowed in fuels for road transport. Even with the ECA now in effect, shipping fuels are 600 times dirtier than on-road diesel truck fuel.
"The dangerous air pollution from these floating smokestacks is a threat to tens of millions of Americans who live and work along our coastlines," Elena Craft, health scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. "America has the ingenuity to meet these vitally important clean air standards and protect human health and the environment from the serious impacts associated with shipping pollution."
In the environmental community, calls to put a carbon price on bunker fuel have been steadily growing louder (ClimateWire, May 25).
Alaska and cruise ship owners object
Earlier this month, Alaska mounted a lawsuit against the Obama administration to block the North American ECA, citing the high cost of low-sulfur fuel (Greenwire, July 16). The cruise industry has also voiced opposition to the rule, although it supports the general goals and principles.
"Our industry is committed to protecting coastal air quality not only because it is the responsible thing to do, but also because the very nature of our business depends on a healthy natural environment," according to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
But the industry is concerned about the limited availability of low-sulfur fuel and the related economic impacts. Ships could end up competing with land-based businesses for ECA-compliant fuel, which would ultimately raise prices for the public. Under the current rule, CLIA projects the number of cruise passengers visiting North American ports would fall by 2.2 million, cutting 14,000 jobs and producing $1.5 billion in losses to local economies.
The cruise industry has said the singular focus on low-sulfur fuels could also have a higher impact on human health than some other options, such as exhaust scrubbers, using alternative energy sources at port and adjusting ship speeds. CLIA has been working with a bipartisan group of House and Senate members to urge EPA to adopt a more flexible approach to meeting the ECA goals.
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6 Comments
Add CommentThis is good news indeed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank goodness it passed. It amazes me how cheep some people can be when it comes to cleaning up the environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's about time. The only reason bunker C is so dirty is that oil companies can get away with it. Bunker C is the bottom of the barrel after the refining process but there is no reason why it has to be so high in sulfur and other toxic chemicals. If refiners are forced to clean it up before selling it to ships this pollution would not be a problem in the first place. This new law is a start, but refineries will still produce the vast majority of their bunker C as dirty fuel and sell it to foreign buyers. The oil companies have demonstrated time and again that moral issues are not their concern or responsibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a case of where international law should trump even our own laws. Oil companies don't care about pollution and the EPA can only affect American ports. I hate to say it, but this is a new era in international trade and international laws are becoming more and more necessary as corporations find more and more ways to get around American law. Eventually the world will have to form a stronger alliance to protect us from international corporations that now consider themselves above the law and immune from taxes.
Yes, it will affect the bottom line and run up costs, but eventually we will all have to pay for this pollution anyway. I say make the oil and shipping industries pay their fair share too.
I believe cruise ships use a lot of fuel for their generators, which provide electricity for the ship. Maybe they could offset some of the cost of the increased fuel prices by adding some solar panels to the cruise ships. That would be cool.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's all very well getting stuck into the shipping industry, and this has been going for years concerning not only air pollution, but garbage and sewage......its obvious that shipping is responsible for every form of pollution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, however, would like to say a few words in defence of the industry........MARPOL 73/78 has been in place many years and it has six Annexes being:
Annex I the disposal of oil and oily mixtures
Annex II disposal of noxious liquid substances
Annex III disposal of harmful sustances in packaged form
Annex IV disposal of sewage
Annex V disposal of garbage (especially plastics)
Annex VI air pollution from ships (the latest of the annexes)
Without goig into detail IMO and SOLAS through the introduction of MARPOL have made a real effort to "clean up the world of shipping"
It's a pity that similar regulations, etc are not applied to the land based polluters, one of the worst being coal fired power stations.
Obviously in in port cities it's the ships that cause all the problems and not the industries that port cities attract.
Another example is that of sewage. Ships are reasonably regulated in respect to this........look around the world and note the outfalls into the sea of only partially treated sewage from cities containing millions of people.........but, again........it's the ships that cause the problems with crews of say 18-28 for even large cargovessels and tankers.
Just one other point before I depart and that is......if you look hard enough you will find some shore based diesel engines (medium speed) and boilers burning the same fuel that is being burnt on ships.......bunkers, or FFO.
Get the EPA on the back of shore based industry to get their act cleaned up.
One may also raise the question........What are US & Canadian oil refineries going to do with the left over component of the refining, catalytic cracking, hydro-refining, etc.......probably do what they have been doing for years, selling it off at about $600 per ton as bunkers for use in merchant shipping, or as poined out in this article, "that dirtiest fuel on the planet".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder what the truethful answer would be????