Ocean-Going Ships Are The Last Bastion Of The Dirty Diesels

Yesterday, I testified in Congress on Senator Barbara Boxer’s bill (S. 1499, the Marine Vessels Emissions Reduction Act)  to require dirty, polluting ocean-going ships to use cleaner fuel within 200 miles of our coasts.  (And, by the way, even after 17 years at NRDC, it’s always a great thrill to sit at the witness table in one of the Senate’s grand hearing rooms, and engage in the back and forth of legislative debate with Senators from both sides of the aisle). 

We can all agree on how important these ships are to our way of life.  The coffee that I drank this morning, the banana that I just ate at my desk, and even the fabric in the US-made shirt that I’m wearing right now—they all came to me on those huge ships.   These ships bring us what we want and what we need, when and where we want it.   

But these ships also bring us pollution that unnecessarily threatens the health of millions of Americans who live near or downwind from our ports.  These dirty diesel engines trigger asthma attacks, cancers and as many as 5,000 premature deaths every year.  Most of the communities near our ports are low-income communities and/or communities of color, so port pollution is also an environmental justice issue.

And, it’s not just the obvious port cities like Los Angeles and Long Beach that are affected.  A map that highlights the most serious health impacts from ships would dovetail well with a map that shows where most of our people live, and where most of the pollution is. 

Unless strong action is taken, the situation will only get worse.  Business-as-usual projections suggest that global shipping will roughly double by 2020 and triple by 2030.   From an environmental and public health perspective, “business-as-usual” emissions are unacceptable.

Luckily, diesel pollution is a solvable problem.

Over the past decade, emissions from new diesel engines have plummeted, thanks to new EPA regulations that cover most diesel engines.  The key steps in each of these programs have been to reduce sulfur levels in the fuel, and then to create emission standards that match pollution-cutting technologies to the sulfur level.  (Just as we had to take lead out of gasoline to get cleaner cars in the 1970s and 1980s, we have to take sulfur out of diesel fuel to get cleaner trucks, buses, farm equipment, and ships today).   

Consider this:  any transit bus uses diesel fuel with no more than 15 parts-per-million (ppm) of sulfur in it, and has an advanced soot filter that makes a 2007 bus engine more than 90 percent cleaner than a 2006 engine.  Sulfur in the fuel in an Amtrak train is capped at 500 ppm, and new trains will soon have similar filtering technology, assuming EPA finalizes its current proposal to clean up trains and smaller boats soon (check out my earlier post on the status of this EPA rule here).   

But an ocean-going ship uses fuel that has, on average, 27,000 ppm of sulfur, no meaningful pollution controls, and no pollution standards to meet.  Ocean-going ships truly are the last bastion of dirty diesel engines.    

Senator Boxer’s bill would require all ships, whether carrying U.S. or foreign flags, to use a lower sulfur fuel, capped at 1,000 ppm, within 200 miles of our west coast.  It also directs EPA to determine what the east coast and Gulf coast low-sulfur border should be. It also requires EPA to set a standard for the maximum amount of nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollution from these ships in these coastal waters, which is important to the ozone reduction efforts of our coastal states.  

A recent study commissioned by our friends at the Clean Air Task Force showed that reducing sulfur to the 1,000 ppm within 200 nautical miles of the North American coast would cut shipping-related premature mortalities in half by 2012, eliminating as many as 2,500 premature deaths every year.  Doing so would result in health benefits to society that are estimated at roughly ¼ billion dollars per year, far exceeding even the highest estimates of any implementation costs.  

Moreover, the International Council on Clean Transportation (who, by the way, are doing super-fantastic work on critical vehicle pollution issues around the world) recently reported that roughly ¾ of all ship emissions occur within 400 kilometers (248 miles of land).  So, if you want to solve the problem of global shipping emissions, it’s far more effective to develop and enforce strict limits in coastal areas than to have a somewhat weaker, but global standard.  

And, in fact, that’s a key part of the debate at the international level.  Earlier this month, a subcommittee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed, for the first time, to consider forcing large ships to use smog-cutting smokestack controls that could reduce NOx from new ship engines by as much as 80 percent over the next decade. 

But there’s no resolution on the key question of what sulfur level to pick:  proposals include global limits that range from 5,000 to 30,000 ppm, and coastal limits that range from 1,000 ppm to 5,000 ppm to no special attention for coastal areas at all.   And, without resolution of the sulfur issue, that 80 percent NOx cut may not move forward either.  

Like I said, the global shipping trade is critical to our way of life, but its emissions are unnecessarily high.  And, we know that the pollution one is a solvable one.  As our diesel trucks, buses, tractors, and cranes get cleaner and cleaner, it’s critical to find a way to close this remaining “dirty diesel” loophole.  

By the way, Happy President’s Day everybody.  This holiday may have been reduced to not much more than an excuse to go shopping, but my daughter reminded me today that it’s really about honoring George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  

I’m something of a Lincoln buff, so here’s a couple of links, in case you want to skip the mall this year and re-read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural Address.   Enjoy the holiday.