POLB touts carrier compliance with emission-reduction program

Green Flag is a voluntary program at the Port of Long Beach that provides incentives for ocean carriers to reduce speed near shore so they create less harmful pollution in the city.    Shipping lines calling the Port of Long Beach cut thousands of tons of air pollution last year by voluntarily participating in the port’s Green Flag Program, which offers financial rewards for ships that reduce their speed near the harbor to decrease emissions, the port authority said Tuesday.
   The program, initiated 11 years ago as part of Long Beach’s Green Port Policy, gives participants a Green Flag to celebrate their environmental accomplishments and dockage rate breaks to shipping lines slowing to 12 knots or less within 20 or 40 nautical miles of the Port. In 2015, 154 vessel operators met or exceeded the program’s required 90 percent participation rate at either 20 or 40 nautical miles. The speed of every vessel in the speed-reduction zone is measured and recorded by the Marine Exchange of Southern California. The port authority has posted a list of all Green Flag carriers and their compliance rates. 
   The Green Flag Program has been highly successful in reducing air pollution from ships, the leading port-related source of emissions. Since 2005, the Port has targeted emissions from ships, trucks, trains, harbor craft and yard equipment. As a result, diesel particulates are down 85 percent, smog-forming sulfur oxides are down 97 percent, nitrogen oxides are down 50 percent and greenhouse gases are down 21 percent.
   Other efforts to reduce vessel emissions include the Green Ship Program to encourage newer vessels with cleaner engines to come to Long Beach, providing infrastructure for vessels to hookup to landside electricity rather than running diesel-powered auxiliary engines to power systems while at berth, and deploying a new barge-mounted technology that connects to smoke stacks and captures and treats the emissions so they are not pumped into the air.
   “Our voluntary environmental initiatives have led to dramatic improvements in air quality,” Port of Long Beach CEO Jon Slangerup said in a statement. “We have surpassed our clean air goals for 2014 and nearly all of them for 2023. We continue to aspire to be the world’s first zero emissions port.”