Yesterday, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted new fuel and emissions standards for large diesel-fueled, ocean-going ships. When fully implemented, this will help reduce pollution by 80 percent or more from even the largest, dirtiest, sootiest cargo ships on the high seas, including those that are foreign-flagged operating in U.S. waters.
Cleaner ships will be good news for anybody who breathes air that is downwind from any of our nation's ports.
And, that's a lot of people: according to the U.S. EPA, more than 87 million Americans live near ports that don't meet EPA's federal health standards for ozone or particulate matter, the key pollutants linked to dirty ship pollution. Millions more live downwind, since the toxic particles can travel for hundreds of miles.
There are two steps to the new IMO program. First, in countries that establish "emissions control areas" (ECAs), large ships will have to use fuel that contains 98 percent less sulfur than the current global cap (1,000 parts per million (ppm) vs. 45,000 ppm). Plus, ships operating in ECAs will have to install pollution-cutting equipment to ultimately achieve reductions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 80 percent, particulate matter (PM) by 85 percent, and sulfur oxides (SOx) by 95 percent, compared to current emissions levels.
Second, all ships in international trade (i.e., even those not in ECAs) will be required to use fuel with no more than 5,000 ppm sulfur by 2020. That's still a 90 percent reduction from today's global cap. Even for these ships, new engine standards will cut NOx emissions by 20 percent and will apply to new engines and to existing engines (as certified low-emission kits become available) beginning in 2011.
Of course, to get the cleaner fuels and ships at our ports, the U.S. must now move forward to establish an ECA for all U.S. coastal areas: east, gulf, and west. This will require an EPA rulemaking under the Clean Air Act, which should start right away.
As regular Switchboard readers know, ship emissions have been a big concern at NRDC for years. My colleagues in California have created some of the most effective, innovative programs for the ports there. Their report, "Harboring Pollution: Strategies to Clean Up U.S. Ports," was the kick-off for a slew of important programs in California and elsewhere.
But even the best local programs have been stuck with a basic truth: no amount of alternatively-fueled cargo handling equipment and dockside electric power for ships unloading their cargo can offset the impact of the world's huge ships belching black particulate soot at uncontrolled levels.
And, as emissions decline from other transportation sources, ship emissions will become a larger part of the nation's pollution inventory. According to EPA, in 2001, oceangoing vessels contributed only about six percent of nitrogen oxide (NOx), 10 percent of particulate matter (PM), and roughly 40 percent of sulfur dioxide (SOx) to the nation's air pollution from mobile sources. Without further controls, pollution will increase to about 34 percent of NOx, 45 percent of PM, and 94 percent of SOx emissions by 2030.
To sum it up, this global agreement will help people breathe in port and other downwind communities in years to come. But to have the maximum benefit, EPA needs to adopt an ECA for our coasts.
Luckily, since EPA staff were the key catalysts in moving the IMO agreement from concept to final agreement (here's a shout-out to Margo Oge and her team at EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, which carried this agreement from concept through years of tough negotiations), I'm extremely hopeful.
]]>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.
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