U.S. proposes tougher standards to control ocean vessel emissions

U.S. proposes tougher standards to control ocean vessel emissions    The U.S. House of Representatives Monday approved legislation aimed at cutting emissions from diesel powered ships. But the United States is already working to upgrade the international standards the law is intended to implement.
   If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the Maritime Pollution Prevention Act of 2007, H.R. 802, would give the U.S. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency authority to develop and set emission and fuel standards for domestic and foreign-flagged vessels in U.S. waters.
   The bill would align U.S. ship emission standards and requirements with current international treaty regulations set by the International Maritime Organization in 1997. These regulations, which took effect in 2005, limit sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from ship exhausts. The U.S. Senate adopted the treaty last year.
   The American Association of Port Authorities applauded the environmental legislation.
   'While port authorities nationwide are taking steps to reduce their air emissions from land-based sources, such as cargo handling equipment and trucks idling at port entry gates, they can't control emissions from foreign-flagged oceangoing vessels, which represent an unregulated source of port area emissions, ' AAPA President Kurt Nagle said in a statement.
      But governments and industry recognize that the existing IMO standards don’t effectively deal with the problem of vessel air emissions. Caps on the sulfur content of fuel are so far above actual levels, for example, that they have resulted in virtually no reduction in sulfur emissions. The IMO’s nitrogen oxide standard was intended to reduce emissions from new engines by 30 percent, but recent data shows only a 15 percent to 20 percent reduction because of the long transition time for carriers to replace old engines with newer models. And the current IMO standards do not address particulate emissions.
      According to a recent report issued by the International Council on Clean Transportation, ocean-going vessels produce more sulfur oxide emissions than all the world’s cars, trucks and buses combined. Allowable sulfur oxide levels are 3,000 times higher than for land-based vehicles in many countries, according to the EPA.
   West Coast ports have come under increasing fire over diesel emissions from truck, train and ship emissions related to port activity. The twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation's busiest container ports, are the largest single-point source of diesel pollution in the Southern California basin.
   Local authorities are unlikely to grant permission to expand port facilities to deal with the every-increasing amount of global trade moving through ports unless the maritime industry reduces its environmental impact.
   The EPA estimates that by 2030 marine diesel engines on ocean-going vessels will account for 83 percent of U.S. mobile-source sulfur oxide emissions, 28 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions and 20 percent of particulate matter emissions.
   Not willing to wait on national or international efforts, the state of California has already proposed its own emissions requirements for commercial vessels. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have instituted clean air measures and major ports around the world are following suit.
   Ocean carriers would like to see a common international standard that governs ships and ship fuel types, World Shipping Council President Chris Koch said Monday.
   “We need a single standard that works whether it’s in Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle or going through the Panama Canal,” he said during the National Industrial Transportation League’s Spring Forum in Arlington, Va.
   The World Shipping Council supports the House legislation.
   It also backs a U.S. proposal to the IMO for the establishment of performance standards for particulate matter, sulfur oxide and nitrogen oxide that would be met through the use of low-sulfur fuel, clean-burning or exhaust filtering technologies, or some combination of both. Under the recommendation recently submitted by the EPA in advance of the IMO’s mid-April meeting, ship owners and operators would have discretion to select the most cost-effective means to meet the emission standards.
   The EPA proposal, developed in cooperation with industry stakeholders, is designed to create a predictable regulatory structure around the world.
   The EPA wants the IMO to adopt a low-sulfur heavy fuel standard for use in defined coastal zones and set the following standards for existing and new engines:
   * Engines built prior to 2000 would be required to reduce nitrogen oxides 20 percent by 2012, with certain exceptions.
   * Engines built after Jan. 1, 2011 would need to produce 15 percent to 25 percent fewer nitrogen oxides than the current limits.
   * Engines built after Jan. 1, 2016 must meet nitrogen oxide limits 80 percent below the second tier level, within specified coastal zones.
   “It’s a very aggressive proposal,” Koch said in a follow-up interview. “That fuel standard is probably not commercially available at present and is probably double the cost of bunker fuel’s today.”